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camera show

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

This morning, Mari pointed out that an invitation to a used camera fair had been sitting around in our apartment for quite some time. The fair is on now, so we decided to go.

I'd been to the fair, which seems to be a yearly thing, in 2006. At that time, I'd been surprised at the amount of cheap Minolta gear at the show, and had been blown away at seeing my favourite body (Minolta XD) on sale for hte equivalent of $100. At the time, I wasn't using my Minolta gear.

In the past two years I've seriously begun using my film equipment again. This was thanks to my discovery of a very rare Minolta MD 20mm lens -- a wideangle lens I'd always lacked) and my brother sending me a package of used gear (including a body, a fine 50mm lens and a grat flash). So I thought I might try to pick up:

a) a second XD body

b) an 85mm lens

But I was greatly disappointed. There was next to no Minolta manual-focus equipment at the two dozen booths. Plenty of Nikon and Leica gear, to be sure, and quite a bit of old Olympus and Canon stuff. But it seems that Minolta has dropped off the face of the Earth .. perhaps because it is no longer producing new equipment.