Childhood hifi setting up

Beyond this photography thing I have other interests one of which is music and over the years I have had various reproducers from portable stereo radio record players to hifi equipment and in th course of which I read a good number of magazines and inded still do

One I read in the late 1970's and early 1980's was Hifi For Pleasure and in November of 1981 as I was still in the sixth form I bought that months copy  and in it was a most useful freebee, a test record.

Test records and today test cds are designed to help you set up your stereo by providing signals designed to check various aspects of it such as getting the left and right channels correct, setting up tone arms to track records the best your cartridge can.

These were the printed instructions which are quite comprehensive setting what is on the disc and how you use each test (and what to adjust) although when it comes to the highest levels very few set ups can manage that and you're just trying to get it to do it the best it can.

I've found this 7 inch/ 18 cm disc very handy over the years.

70-150 moderate Telezoom

Given the issue of the hand holding the 80-210mm and its weight I acquired a shorter  telezoom having many of the qualities of it in a more reasonable 460gram form. Serial #112984

Instead of opting for Minolta's own, I got Tamron's 70-150 F3.5  type 20A mounted to Minolta MD which offers excellent image quality across the focal lengths and very good close focussing that doesn't need engaging first to use in that mode.
Introduced in 1980, it was a very popular model although amateurs were looking for bigger zoom ranges and lighter construction in that period before auto focus cameras became prevalent so it only remained in production upto 1984.
Actually this lens is really an F4 as Modern Photography magazine tests alluded to without spelling it out but it has a bright enough image and uses a 49mm filter thread which is the same as the wide angles and 135mm F3.5
I find it a perfect compromise for when I may need something I can fine tune just beyond the 50mm standard lens, in the knowledge the upper range can be complemented by either the 200 or 300mm lenses.

The Lubitel 2B

At the start of this blog I mentioned the cameras I had as a boy and how that fed into my passion for photography, the majority of which were compact cameras of one sort or another such as Kodak "Instamatic" 126 cartridge  models and a 120 boxy shaped one.
Like many boys I did have  fascination with older equipment especially if it was of better quality than what I had and at that time older Kodak box cameras could be had a few pounds from school or church fair sales unlike today.

One improvement was the quality of the lens and another is 120 roll film known today as 'medium format' has a bigger negative that can capture more detail and has less grain and so it was in 1979 for Christmas I had a brand new camera.
The Lubitel 2B is part of a fairly unique species of camera that uses two lenses, one for the view finder which is the smaller one on the top your peer down to view and another much bigger one that includes the shutter for taking the picture.
Mamiya in Japan made some which had interchangable pairs of lenses such as the C330 but my Lubitel made do with just one of 75mm focal length which is roughly 45mm in regular 35mm film terms.
It was a copy made in what was the Soviet Union of the Voightlander Brillaint German prewar Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) from the 1930's which meant  the shutter speed range was restricted from 1/15 thru 1/250 with Bulb which was set around the lens mouth as were the aperture settings.
It also lacked a light meter so unless you were prepared to guess, you needed to carry a separate lightmeter with you to set the shutter speed and aperture with.
Provided you knew what you were doing, always checked on the back of the camera for how many frames you had wound on and kept to suitable subjects (never airplanes in the sky) you could as I did get some lovely photos from it.

Teleconvertor

These have the useful properties of doubling the focal length while maintaining the same close focusing as the original lens.

I use a Teleplus MC7 seven element one I bought from Jessops in Stoke on Trent back in April 1996 which has works well.
It has a very useful property of having the rear element adjustable to enable life size (1:1) reproduction when used with the 50mm so-called Standard lens for Macro work with the reproduction scale as well as the focus distance marked from when the main lens is set to its minimum focus.

Flash and the Minoltas!

Because the X9 and XD7 do not use though the lens metered flash you need to use either a completely manual flash setting the exposure using a chart in connection with the lens aperture settings or so called computer flash.

The X700 and 500 models can use TTL flash and so I got the Minolta PX360 X700/500 compatible TTL flash unit with a guide number of 36 which covers focal lengths from 35mm upwards. The FDC indicator indicates if the TTL-OFC metered flash was within range

It can be used with the other two bodies with three automatic settings controlled via a sensor on the bottom front of the flash gun or completely manually with the option to reduce the Gn output down to 1/16th if needed.
The head tilts up for bouncing for a softer, less harsh impact.

It was that which led to Minolta discontinuing the 320X flash issued at the launch of the XD7 as it carried over the choice of three aperture settings with the built in sensor for those bodies not TTL-OFC flash equipped in 1981.
I will add the Vivitar 283 flash or even the Olympus system T32 would provide similar control if you were not using TTL flash or own a model without it as an alternative.
If you use a studio flashhead unit for say portraiture you meter that by hand.

Telezoom

 










Tamron 80-210 F3.8-4 58mm Filter thread Type 103A No.21458934

I bought this from Jessops in October 1996 as I was fed up with a modern telezoom (Centon) as much for the gloomy view at the telephoto end at a maximum aperture of F5.6 as the image quality.
Although it was without a case and obviously used with a few bits of paint missing I was and remain impressed by its' image quality which is very good for a zoom. Its' close focusing is good coming complete with its own dedicated lens hood.
It's just too heavy for me to use hand held.

Long telephoto

Minolta MC Rokkor-PE 300mm F5.6

This lens dates back to around 1975 and was the last MC models before the MD series with its additional minimum aperture coupling tab was launched for the XD7 and XD5 cameras  in 1977.
Optically it uses the same glassware as the MD version but due to only having the one meter coupling can't display the correct reading using the XD series Shutter priority exposure mode  although it will work as well as the X700's program mode (although frankly you'd never use program with a long telephoto lens) as both meter the exposure at the point of taking the picture.
Its maximum aperture is par the course for that era so the viewfinder will be a bit dim but perfectly serviceable compared to the shorter telephoto lenses although I'd point out Olympus only offered a F4.5 version for the OM system and the filter thread is a easy to use 55mm.
The practical upshot is so long as like me you could do without using the Shutter priority mode on the XD7, what you do get is actually a really good marque lens for very little money as trying to make a good lens of this focal length is difficult and back in the 1970's and 80's, many independent lens makes struggled to.
They offered okay rather than great lenses at prices people could afford back then new but today there's no reason to limit yourself that way buying used. 
Serial number: 1018533