X500 Silver

There are two Minolta's X500's.

This is the Silver one which is more common and in some respects looks more obviously early 80's than it's all black cousin.
No: 60330174

The above is the original 1983 brochure introducing it with the black version shown coupled to the motordrive, a fast winder popular with professional and advanced amateurs into wildlife or sports photography.

In  coy way  the brochure  spells out just what makes it the better bet for advanced amateurs and professionals than the X700, the top end model of the X series without drawing out the comparison relying on magazine reviews and users to it spell it out.

Having used both, I much prefer the X500 in the field while when it comes to accessories the two cameras use the same as you can use it without having to remove your eye from the viewfinder.

The loss of the Program mode is no great loss as it is a general all purpose program mode rather than having program shifts or preset modes dedicated more to sports and so on that were to become more common place in the late 80's and beyond and there's no need to have a exposure compensation dial to apply compensation, given you have metered manual to set one, a exposure lock to take and fix a substitute reading and in the final event, there's also just resetting the film speed to cause the exposure given to differ.

X500 (570) - less is more

Minolta like a number of Japanese manufacturers had a flagship model in a series and then produced cut down versions offering certain core common features while removing others that amateur photographers with a limited budget didn't need or if made for certain specialty dealers to differentiate their model from the regular one. 

The X500 introduced in April 1983 is a good example of this in that it lost the X700's Program exposure mode and the exposure compensation dial but retained all the other features of that model.

The program mode of the X700 was biased toward high shutter speed and wide apertures designed in the era of only Slr bodies giving you the ability to use zoom lens with compact camera like  ease as in wind on, focus and click.

Where the X500 scores is it is better designed around the needs of the advanced amateur, indicating the shutter speed selected as well as the recommended one in metered manual exposure mode you'd use for landscape photography in the viewfinder rather than having take one eye from the viewfinder to check the shutter speed speed set as on the X700.

In practice this is much quicker making using it in manual really easy. 

In its Aperture Priority auto exposure mode unlike the X300/370/X9 models the camera indicates first the likely shutter speed and at the point of taking the picture, sets the final used shutter speed  for greater accuracy using an additional Spd cell.

Although it loses its exposure compensation settings on a dedicated dial, you can easily achieve the same result by temporarily resetting the film speed setting in third steps (which on a number of  Olympus bodies of that era  is the same thing merely marked up!).

Like the X700 it also keeps its TTL Of the film flash metering with suitable flash units.
Functionally I see it this body as more like a bit of plastic under the hood equivalent to Olympus's OM2 sharing the same modes and similar metering.

It was a unfortunate in all the fuss around the X700, the real strengths of this cut down version tuned more to the needs of advanced amateurs got lost. 

Body no. 6080842

Christmas 2014

Pretty much last entry of the year so I'm looking at old routines a bit here.

This is a photo I do like a lot for capturing the two boys sharing a tale about a book they've been reading and shows boys can look stunning in a kilt as well as short trousers.

Christmas being here, there were a number of Annuals, those perennials from my childhood where you got a softback book featuring cartoon strips from your favourite comics, extra features, quizzes  and games.

This time of year for me has been more as it was as a young boy for a long time and truth be known, I just love it as that.

As the initiated know, I do read this comic a lot loving the adventures of Minnie The Minx, Dennis The Menace and the Bash Street Kids so here's this years annual which is always published for the next year.

A comic I used to love but has folded from weekly publishing was the Dandy with Korky the Cat and Desperate Dan of Cow Pie fame but they do specials such as this years annual so I was mighty glad to get that one.

Things like that and selection boxes of chocolates are what I most look forward to at Christmas apart from Christmas dinner with my parents.

Styx: The Grand Illusion, Paradise Theater and Pieces of Eight on compact disc

This blog has been going for a bit, mainly centring on photography but I do have other interests so over a few issues I'll look at them here.

In 2010 Mr Kevin Grey remastered The Grand Illusion with its hits Little Miss America and Come Sail away for the specialty cd label Audio Fidelity, keeping more of its warm sounding mix in than most on this gold plated regular cd.

As I have commented on one music site before the Styx catalogue has been left as is from the early days of the compact disc and can be divided between the decent but nothing special and the clearly inferior to lp versions.

 
On January 19th 1981 the band issued the concept album Paradise Theater based on the real story of a theatre in their native Chicago which came out on laser etched lp and tape versions (8 track and cassette) which topped the US album chart and featured four forty-fives, Rockin' The Paradise, Too Much Time On My Hands, The Best Of Times that charted at #3 and Nothing Ever Goes As Planned.

 
It was an album I bought near date of release and always loved for the musicianship and story telling in a song.

This new Super Audio cd also playable on regular cd edition sounds quite a bit clear with more definition than the original disc.

Another album of theirs whose cd version left a fair bit to be desired was Pieces Of Eight  based around the story of a boxing but which on cd sounded thin and splashy

ln September 2017 this disc that featured the 45 Blue Collar Man, Renegade and The Great White Hope was issued on Super audio cd also playable in regular cd having been mastered by Kevin Gray from the A&M master tapes.

This edition is a lot better than the 1987 original cd.

Comic tastes

Comics have been an interest of mine from early childhood onward although as with many you find your parents cancel any orders when they think you're too old for them even though a good number read them over the age of sixteen well into adulthood.

The world of comics has changed in the last fifteen or so years with a good number I grew up with having ceased publication and indeed in late 2012 we even lost The Dandy.

The one that still survives comes from the same publisher, D C Thomson and that is the Beano which has changed a bit over the years as indeed it had to to stay relevant to today's children.

The copy pictured here is last weeks edition, dated 13 September with a mixture of old favourites but set in 2014 and some newer cartoon strips.

I still go to our local shop and buy a copy.
 

Joni Mitchell - The Studio Albums

There were a number of things I didn't get around to getting in the lp era  and one was gathering a collection of the talented Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell's groundbreaking early albums which together with the Guess Who, Bachman-Turner Overdrive and Neil Young elevated Canadian rock challenging that of Great Britain and the United States.

The Studio Albums 1968-1979, released October 29, 2012 surveys Mitchell's discography from the folk-rock poetry of 1968's Song to a Seagull through to her more exploratory jazz collaboration with Charlies Mingus, 1979's Mingus. 

As a set of albums each is richly rewarding to explore to the keen musicologist interested in seeing an artist and sounds develop rather than just wanting just another set of songs written and performed in the same style.

That was never my thing really.

Each disc is reproduced in gatefold card format replicating the jackets of the original Reprise and Asylum lps of the era and held in cardboard clam type box.

At the rear there is a listing of each album and the tracklisting that aids the process of select a disc or two to play.

When it comes to the mastering the Reprise discs use the more recent HDCD masters that play on regular players and have the Avacado coloured label when the Asylums use plain silver with logo in colour resign.

Recently I got a near mint used edition because such sets are often more rewarding for artists such as Greatest Hits sets that may include well known songs like Woodstock or Big Yellow Taxi.

This set doesn't include her live albums of the period but you can get them separately if you wish.

The train of thought

 

Photography certainly is a thing with me as in the pictures I take, the equipment I use to take them but there is another side which the topics of things I take and for that matter pictures others have taken that interest me.

I have had issues concerning how dad tended to overdo his interests including trains whenever we went away but it wasn't that I didn't like trains, actually I love steam trains but would of loves to of been about before they all got removed and replaced by deisel ones like those near where I first lived.

I also liked even unlike some of my peers as a boy to dress a bit more formal in jackets, caps ands proper short trousers just like these boys did rather then being pushed more into ghastly sweaty Jeans that seemed to all boys and some girls wore outside of school and church.