There was one thing that needed attending to, however - the viewfinder window had been pushed in so that it was askew. Light seals are already a mix of felt and foam, and are intact so I’ll leave them alone for now. This neglected beauty required more than my usual light surface cleaning, I had to take some rubbing compound (Circle 7) to the metal to get the greenishs spots off, but now it looks great. I can see why they continue to be popular after all this time! Repairs Something about the fit & finish and the smoothness of the shutter and winder action just makes this SLR a pleasure to use. I haven’t been able to put this to a quantifiable test but I’ll take their word for it.Īll in all, the SRT 101 is a well-balanced, well-made, fairly full-featured mechanical SLR. Here’s a trip backwards in time from the lightweight black plastic of the 45mm to the black metal PG 1.4 back to the the early scalloped edge design of the PF 1.7:ĬLC stands for Contrast Light Compensation, it’s Minolta’s dual photocell metering system that is designed to compensate better in high contrast lighting situations. It’s interesting to see the changes in lens housing design over the years.
Early lenses were coded with letters that indicated the number of groups and elements (a la Nikon). The X on Rokkor-X simply indicates that it was sold outside of Japan (Xport?) but the lenses are otherwise identical to those just called Rokkor. Rokkor lenses are fairly legendary, I know I’ve enjoyed using the ones on my Minolta rangefinders. After that was the X series but that’s another page. The SRT series went through changes as well, from the 100 to 101, 101b, and then the 200 series which were very similar but added a hotshoe and other features. To backtrack a bit, the SR came first, a kind of lower budget 1-1/500 SLR that lasted a few rounds (SR-1, 2, 3) and kind of morphed into the SRT series. Turns out there’s quite a cult of Minolta - rightly so - and I’ve heard the longtime later Minolta users say wistfully there’s nothing like the SRT 101 when you just want to go for it. But the price was nice, and my buddy Bill, who got one of his famous ‘I can’t believe you only paid…’ deals when he picked up an XD11 at a thrift store for $10, raved about the lens quality.
I avoided getting one for the longest time, I already have enough different SLR mounts that only sort of play nice with each other. To sum: a solid classic all-mechanical design plus a fantastic 1.7 Rokkor lens in Minolta’s own MC bayonet mount. On the other hand, the 101 has full mirror lockup AND an aperture preview button. Of course the K1000 has a hot shoe, which wasn’t added on the SRT line till the 101b, or till it became the 201.
Wow, just what I needed, another SLR! This one the classic Minolta SRT 101, the K1000 of the Minolta cameras.
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