Blog Archives

How The Death Of Minolta Gave Rise To Sony Cameras

10/31/2018

https://ift.tt/2yInZMh

How The Death Of Minolta Gave Rise To Sony Cameras

https://ift.tt/2qjhHxZ

Put your virtual hands up if you own a Sony camera.

Quite a few of you I'm betting.

Now keep those hands up if you remember Minolta cameras. Hmmm, quite a lot less. The thing is, that at the beating heart of your amazing Sony Alpha is the DNA of a great camera company, long since past, Minolta.

Minolta was never a giant like Nikon and Canon, they would probably be regarded as a level down from the two behemoths yet, significant amounts of the technology, not only in your Sonys but also pretty much any other modern DSLR or mirrorless camera comes from the innovation of Minolta through the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s.

Today we are going to look at how a failing film company lives on in one of the world’s most successful photographic brands.

Minolta: The Film Days

PASM is an acronym many of us know. It stands for Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, and Manual. Despite its ubiquitousness on modern cameras, it has only been around for 40 years or so and it was Minolta that introduced it to the world.

The camera was the Minolta XD-7 (or XD-11 in the U.S.) and it was one of the best regarded and technologically advanced cameras of the time. Perhaps more than any other camera, it signaled, Minolta’s intent to innovate.

The genesis for the PASM we know and love today. By Camerafiend CC 3.0

Another feature we take for granted today is autofocus and again it was Minolta that brought this to the photographic world. Although there had been autofocus before, these used specialized and expensive lenses with the autofocus function built into them. Here Minolta innovated and the Minolta 7000F integrated the autofocus into the camera body, leading to the lighter faster lenses we see today.

But that was not the only innovation of the 7000F. It also featured an integrated, motorized film advance into the camera body. Until then, cameras required an expensive and battery intensive attachment to power wind the film. The DNA of this Minolta innovation lives on in the continuous shooting modes that all digital cameras have today.

There is one other innovation that the 7000F introduced to the world, one that is still at the very heart of Sony cameras today, the A-mount system. It is the name that gave birth to the Sony Alpha system.

In-camera autofocus traces its roots back the Minolta 7000. By Montauk Public Domain

Minolta: Early Digital Days

Unlike some other big players in the photographic industry, Minolta was not caught unawares by the digital revolution. Indeed they launched their first digital camera way back in 1995, the 1.75mp Minolta RD-175. Not only was this a digital camera, but it was also a DLSR. It was not the first DSLR, that honor went to Kodak but it was the first DSLR that was hand portable and more importantly, affordable to the consumer market.

The world's first affordable DSLR. By Rama CC 2.0

Even in the early days of digital, Minolta’s innovation could not be held back. Another feature commonly found on modern cameras is sensor based stabilization. This stems from Minolta’s Dimage A1, a 5mp bridge camera released in 2003.

Rather than use the more complex and expensive method of stabilizing elements within a lens, the A1 moved the camera sensor instead. Incidentally, the bridge camera is also a Minolta innovation, rising from the release of the DiMAGE 7.

Being one of the smaller camera companies, Minolta struggled financially, to keep up with the big players. In 2003, in an attempt to boost funds, they merged with the much larger film company, Konica, becoming Konica Minolta Ltd.

However, Minolta’s earlier failed attempts to capture a segment of the professional film camera market signaled its eventual downfall. Minolta’s digital cameras were mainly aimed at the consumer market at a time when the big digital players realized it would be the professional market that would drive initial demand.

The Arrival Of Sony.

By the early years of the millennium, Sony was a massive, global electronic brand manufacturing a diverse range of products from audio to televisions. Their relatively small digital camera business was, like Minolta, focussed on the consumer market.

They did, however, recognize the wealth of innovation and engineering talent that Konica Minolta still possessed and in 2006 created a new partnership with them. Six months later, Konica took the decision to leave the camera business altogether and sold it to Sony.

Sony had been looking to get into the DSLR market and Minolta was a perfect match and in particular Minolta’s technologically advanced Alpha mount.

Within a year, Sony had their first DLSR ready for the market, the Alpha A100. It was a 10.2mp camera, very much built around an older Minolta design and featuring many of Minolta’s innovations. These included in-camera stabilization and eye start autofocus.

Taking much of Minolta's design and technology, the A100 was Sony's first DLSR. By Holger Fink Public Domain

The A100 was the launch pad. Sony’s vast wealth allowed them to create an ambitious roadmap of camera releases. This culminated in 2008 with the announcement of a full frame DSLR with the largest pixel count yet seen, 24.6mp, the Alpha 900.

It signalled Sony’s intent to play with the big boys.

Shots fired at the big boys. The a900. By Yorkfield CC v3.0

Using Minolta’s base technologies and their own innovations, Sony continued with their ambitious plans, releasing a wealth of well-received products both in the DSLR and compact markets.

Realizing the potential of the emerging mirrorless market, Sony went all out on producing the world’s first full frame mirrorless camera, the Alpha 7. By now the fabled Minolta Alpha mount had been superseded by Sony’s own E-mount but, if you dig deep, you'll find a significant amount of the DNA of the Alpha 7 comes from the innovation of Minolta.

The mirrorless revolution is being driven by Sony. By Jürgen Matern CC v3.0

Perhaps the moral of this story is that not all photographic companies that fail, end up in the dustbin of history. While there might not be very much left of companies like Kodak or Bronica, the innovation of Minolta lives on deep inside one of the most successful photographic brands of the modern era.

As someone who was a rare Minolta professional user in the 1990’s that brings a warm glow to my heart.

As always, give us your thoughts in the comments below.

Photography News

via Light Stalking https://ift.tt/2kwTW5i

October 31, 2018 at 07:00AM

0 Comments

Posted By Rob Sylvan on Wednesday, October 31, 2018 in Featured, Import, Lightroom Classic, Lightroom Tips | 0 comments

We love Lightroom for the power of the Develop module, but there is so much more to love about how it can streamline our entire post processing and asset management workflows. Over the next two weeks I’m going to share some of my favorite practices for becoming more efficient. One of Lightroom’s greatest strengths is its ability to help you create a consistent foundation to your workflow that saves you time through its efficiency and gives you dependable results. In fact there’s a number of things you can do right from the start that will help you create a more consistent workflow.

Consistent Naming Practices

One of the first places is creating a consistent file naming and folder naming convention. I don’t believe that there is a single right way to name files and folders, but as long as the method you choose makes sense to you (most importantly) and it can scale up over time, then that should do the trick. Lightroom can help you with both of these jobs, so let’s look at folder names first.

Folder Naming

I like to use Lightroom to create folders as part of the import process, and I also like to use the automated date-based folder name structure as it scales nicely into the future without me having to do anything more. The one thing I don’t like about Lightroom’s automated folder naming functionality is that you can’t customize the date-generated names to include more than just a date. However, this limitation is easily overcome after import. Here’s my approach:

Step One: In the Destination panel of the Import dialog set the Organize option to By date and choose a Date Format that suits your needs.

Step Two: Select the parent folder where you want Lightroom to create these date-based subfolders.

Note: Lightroom creates the subfolders based on the capture date of the photos being imported, and these new folders will appear in the Destination panel in an italicized font.

Step Three: Configure the rest of the Import dialog options and click the Import button.

Once the import process is complete you’ll see the new folder(s) appear in the Folders panel. At this point I’ve got the date-based folders, which is great, but I also want to add a descriptive word or two to the folder name to help me know what the folder contains. This is easily done simply by ctrl-clicking (PC: right-clicking) the folder name and choosing Rename from the contextual menu that appears. This opens the Rename Folder dialog box where you can add a word or two and click Save, which renames the folder on your drive and updates the catalog to reflect this change.

For me, this process gives me the best of all worlds, which is an automated process that contains meaningful information and scales nicely into the future.

File Naming

When it comes to individual file names I also look to Lightroom to automate the process. Again, this is an area with a lot of room for individual customization as we all have our own needs to fill, but the basic process starts with creating a custom filename template that includes the information that is important to you. Once you create a filename template you can configure it to be applied from the File Renaming panel of the import screen, or you can apply it at will from the Library module after import. You’ll need to decide where it suits your workflow best, but I know some people prefer to rename after import so that they can delete bad photos then rename all remaining files with a continuous sequence number that doesn’t contain any missing numbers.

You can access the Filename Template Editor from any place you can rename photos. From the Library module, go to Library > Rename Photo(s), then click the File Naming drop-down menu in the Rename dialog box and choose Edit. From the Import screen, expand the File Renaming panel, click the Template drop-down menu and choose Edit. Once the editor is open the steps for creating a new template are the same.

Step One: Delete any existing tokens from the editing window to start fresh.

Step Two: Choose any combination of tokens to create a template that suits your desired file name convention.

Note: You can hard code data into the filename template simply by typing into the editing window. For example, I often enter a hypen or underscore separator by typing this character between tokens.

Step Three: Click the Preset drop-down menu and choose Save current settings as a new preset to save your template for reuse. Give it a meaningful name that represents the tokens used.

A simple template I use consists of the Date token in YYYYMMDD format, followed by an underscore, followed by the Filename number suffix token (this is the camera generated sequence number without the three letter prefix), which is shown in the figure. These can be quite sophisticated, but I lean toward keeping it short and sweet.

Next week I’ll explore additional tools to make your workflow more consistent, efficient, and customized to your needs.

Photography News

Conclusion

Photo Of The Week – October 29, 2018

Photo by David Chesterfield

What Are Our Members Up To?

Photo by Dave W.

Photo by Pamela Winter

Photo by Erik Fransman

Photo by Karenhy

Photo by Deborah

Photo by Kishore Jothady

Photo by Obsidian Urbex Photography

Photo by Clive Eariss

Photo by Rob Eyers

Discussions You Shouldn't Miss From The Community

We'd Love To Hear Your Thoughts

Take an 'e' (off the word Monochrome)

What's the opposite of Iconoclasticism?

Settings? There's an app for that

You can't be serious?

The Difference Between Speedlights, Strobe Lights and Continuous Lights

When to Use Continuous Lights

1. Get stronger lights

2. Soften the light

3. Check the color temperature

4. Turn off all other available lighting

5. Use a three-point light system

Ready to Try Continuous Lights?