Once Minolta let the autofocus cat out of the bag in 1985 with their famous 7000 camera, autofocus technology began to evolve at a lighting pace. Even though the original 7000 was a huge hit, it did leave room for improvement in speed and accuracy with moving subjects. If you’ve seen my earlier episode on the 7000 you may recall that the accuracy was surprisingly good. Still, one problem that was yet to be overcome was the ability to track subject movement all the way up to the exact moment of exposure.
Think of it like this: the camera’s continuous AF system is tracking the moving subject, and it’s keeping up. BUT the instant you press the shutter release, the mirror flips up out of the way for the image to pass to the film plane. So during those last few milliseconds between the mirror up and the shutter opening, the AF system can’t track. And during that time, the subject has the potential to continue to move past the last point of sharp focus.
The problem that needed to be solved, then, was how to continue to track the subject during the mechanics of making the actual exposure? Well, three years after the 7000, Minolta had the solution – Predictive Auto Focus – and incorporated it into their 2nd-generation AF bodies – the first of which was the 7000i. In the marketing surrounding the release of this camera, it was said that the “i” stood for “intelligent”. And that reflected the new AF system’s ability to analyze the subject’s movement and predict the exact position it would be at the instant of exposure – bridging that gap of milliseconds between the shutter release being pressed, the mirror flipping up out of the way, and the image being passed to the film plane.
Another clever addition to the “i” series cameras – as well as the 3rd generation “Xi” series – is what Minolta calls Creative Expansion Cards. These are cards you could purchase separately that could automate certain types of shooting or add additional functionality to the camera.
You know on a lot of modern cameras you have the settings on the exposure dial for landscape, portrait, action, macro, etc? Well at the time this camera came out, no one had thought about doing that. So, Minolta chose expansion cards to provide some of this same functionality.
For example, you could have one for portraits, Mulitple exposures, Fantasy effect, a Child card, Action, and a few others to assist in your creativity.
As for added functionality, you have cards such as Custom Function – which will alter the internal circuits to do stuff like restrict the number of exposure modes available, make the camera adjustable in ½ stop increments instead of the default full stops, and leave the film leader out of the cassette when rewinding film. I like that one in particular because it let’s me cut the leader shape so I can load the film onto the reel for processing. Otherwise, I’ve got to use a film leader retriever to pull it back out when I’m ready to develop it, OR use a changing bag to pull it back out again – which is probably what I’d end up doing because all the film leader retrievers I have suck.
BUT, there is another creative expansion card that – to me at least – is the holy grail of expansion cards, the secret weapon of the Minolta “i” and “Xi” series – the Multi-Spot metering card.
Now, I know you’re sitting there in dis-belief that this gimmicky creative expansion stuff would actually give us something of true photographic value, but believe it. With this card, this camera joins the same club as the Olympus OM-4, the Canon T90, the EOS-3 and the EOS-1V – all pro-oriented cameras. And this is just your typical, unassuming Minolta 7000i.
Check out the video to learn all about the 7000i and 8000i cameras.
Vintage Camera Digest 