The XG series

Sometimes you see the various members of the XG series of cameras Minolta had out from the late 1970's until about 1982 that filled the gap in their range between the entry level SRT 101b which was manual exposure only based on a 1960's SRT101 design and the top of the range XD7 (US/Canada: XDII) and its 1979 cut down version, the XD5.

With one exception the main failing of the range was when in manual mode the shutter speed information wasn't displayed at all which made using it as a manual camera hard going.
All used more plastics than the others to bring modern automation at more affordable prices and used the less quickly responding Cds photocells rather than the much better silicon ones of the XD series.

In addition unlike the XD series these used a cloth shutter with a corresponding slower flash sync speed.

The only one I have some time for is the XG-M which dates to around 1979/80 which did display shutter information in manual mode and also had a depth of field preview so you could use it easily for landscape photography for which is fairly well featured.

All had non TTL flash.

Their replacements were the X300/X370n and X9 models that had most of their features but with better photocells included.