Minolta X-700

Announced in early 1981 at $399.50 for the body, the X-700 sold well; The Rokkor Files calls it Minolta's most successful camera since the SRT era. It stayed in production for eighteen years, outlived the company's own move to autofocus, and was the last of Minolta's advanced manual-focus SLRs before autofocus arrived. Simpler manual-focus bodies, the X-300s, X-370s and X-9 among them, came later. It also introduced the Rising Sun logo. It sat between the professional XD series above and the consumer XG series below. The genuinely interesting story is a cost decision. High 5 Cameras reports that bodies with serial numbers below 2,000,000 typically have tantalum capacitors, which seldom fail. Some time in the mid-eighties Minolta switched to much cheaper electrolytics, which are more likely to fail with age. So an early body is less likely to suffer the capacitor fault, and the serial number tells you more about that risk than the cosmetic condition does. Minolta marketed the whole thing as MPS, the Minolta Program System, and the part of it that still impresses is the flash. A second silicon cell in the mirror box reads light bouncing off the film surface during the exposure and cuts the flash the instant enough light has been delivered. Once a PX flash is charged, the camera sets itself to 1/60 s, its sync speed.

A bright, easy, well-automated manual-focus SLR, and an excellent first film camera. The Acute Matte screen is genuinely bright; Mike Eckman calls it one of the brightest he has used. TTL flash that actually works, with the 280PX, 132PX, 360PX and the Macro 80PX. Access to a very large Rokkor lens system, with the Auto Winder G, the Motor Drive 1 and a Multi-Function data back. All four exposure modes: program, aperture priority, manual and bulb, with exposure compensation to plus or minus two stops and an AE lock. Where it falls short: there is no mechanical shutter speed at all, not even B. A flat battery or a failed capacitor stops the camera dead. Flash sync is 1/60, which limits daylight fill. The automatic range stops at EV 1 at ISO 100, which limits it at night. The body is plastic. There is no shutter priority — the XD-11 has it. And the AE lock and the self-timer share one switch, pressed down for one and pulled up for the other. On lenses: look for MD lenses, because only those enable program mode, and New MD lenses from 1981 add a minimum-aperture lock that stops the ring being knocked off minimum aperture — useful precisely because program requires the ring locked at minimum. MC Rokkor lenses meter at full aperture and work in aperture priority and manual, but Minolta says to use only MD lenses in program; with others the P blinks as a warning. Older pre-MC lenses lack meter coupling entirely.

This is the X-700's signature failure and it has a name: the capacitor. Fresh cells, wind on, half-press — the viewfinder LEDs should light. Full-press and it must fire. If instead the LEDs go out, the shutter does not fire and the advance lever is locked solid, that is it. Do it several times.

The single most useful thing anybody can do with an X-700, and it takes five seconds. High 5 Cameras reports that below two million usually means tantalum capacitors, which seldom fail, and above two million usually means electrolytics, which are often the culprit. That one number tells you how likely the fault above is on this particular body.

No LEDs on half-press, with known-good cells and the main switch on, is not the capacitor symptom described above. Check the battery chamber first for white or green crust: the repairer Andreas Thaler names battery acid and moisture among the common causes of circuit damage, and a damaged circuit can make the body a donor.

Usually not a fault. With an MD lens the aperture ring has to be set to its smallest aperture and locked there. If the ring is not at minimum, or the lens is not an MD, the P in the finder blinks as a warning, which is the camera behaving as designed.

In aperture priority with a lens fitted, rotate the ring through its whole range and watch the indicated shutter speed change smoothly and by the right amount at each stop. Speeds that jump erratically, stick, or ignore a stop suggest a problem with the aperture simulator ring, which is a separate fault.

The light seals and the mirror bumper, and this camera genuinely has both. Open the back and check the channels for black tar; look up into the mirror box with the lens off for a crumbling or absent bumper strip. A decayed bumper is the first thing to check on a camera whose mirror sticks up — before anyone talks to you about the mirror mechanism.

The symptom is precise, and it is not what most people expect. Half-press the shutter release and the viewfinder LEDs light. Full-press and the LEDs go out and the shutter does not fire. The film advance lever is then locked solid, because the shutter is wound but the camera cannot release it. Fresh batteries make no difference. The part is a 220 microfarad 4 volt electrolytic. There are two in an X-700: the shutter-release capacitor on the connector board at the base, which is the one US Camera singles out (it calls it C10), and an aperture-control capacitor under the top cover, which the X-500 and X-300 do not have. It is a capacitor swap, not a scrapped camera. But the boards are very fragile and bad soldering kills them permanently, so for a camera being sold on it is a technician's job. US Camera advises replacing it on any X-700, leaking or not: a leaking capacitor corrodes the board, and the damage can escalate to replacing the main flex assembly. One trap for anyone attempting it: polarity. The capacitor sits the other way round on an X-700 board than on an X-300 board, so a guide or photograph for one will mislead on the other. An electrolytic replacement has its stripe on the negative leg; a tantalum replacement is marked the other way, with its band on the positive leg. Match the polarity markings on the board itself, not a picture.

The Vienna repairer Andreas Thaler describes the camera's five integrated circuits as largely undocumented black boxes. A defective one can only be replaced from an abandoned X-700, and he notes that even service workshops replaced the whole electronics rather than troubleshoot. A capacitor fault is a cheap fix; a failed chip, or a board destroyed by battery leakage or moisture, makes the body a donor.

Six pieces of foam: 1mm in the top and bottom door channels, 1mm in the two back-cover channels, a 2mm mirror cushion and a 2mm hinge seal. Owners note that the bumper sits in a recess rather than exposed as on the older SRT bodies, which makes it harder to reach. The real risk during the job is fragments dropping onto the mirror or the focusing screen. Owners work with cotton swabs lightly dampened with ethanol and bent tweezers, angling the camera forward so debris falls away from the mirror. Removing the old adhesive is the bulk of the work. Seals are a home fix; the recessed bumper is fiddly but doable.

A ring coupled to the lens aperture ring, with contact wipers running on resistance tracks. It is how the camera knows the set aperture while metering at full aperture. Andreas Thaler describes one that moved roughly with a scratching sound, and found bent wipers and debris on the tracks. Getting at it means dismantling the camera, so it is a technician's job.

Two 1.5 volt alkaline LR44, two 1.55 volt silver-oxide SR44, or one 3 volt lithium CR-1/3N. All three are listed in Minolta's own manual. Rechargeable button cells are not among them. The manual says the shutter locks when the voltage is too low, and there is no mechanical fallback speed. Take the cells out for storage: battery acid is one of the causes of circuit damage Andreas Thaler names.

One owner who fitted replacement tantalum capacitors backwards reported the pack falling from 2.8 volts to 1.3 overnight; reversing them cured it. If a body eats batteries overnight, a previous capacitor repair is worth suspecting.