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>But their film cameras lagged Nikon in the sophistication of their AF, their automated exposure control, and especially their flash exposure control. I'm sorr

>But their film cameras lagged Nikon in the sophistication of their AF, their automated exposure control, and especially their flash exposure control. I'm sorry, but you are completely off base here. Nikon always had the lead in flash exposure, yes. But in AF and lenses especially? Canon was the first to completely break compatibility with their older (FD mount) lenses which allowed them to have lightning fast autofocus (Ultrasonic line), which took Nikon more than a decade to catch up to. Same with exposure zones and metering accuracy combined with extremely fast drives - this basically meant that Canon took over sports photography in the mid 90s.

stan_rogers 8y ago
Yessir. They were first to break compatibility, immediately (ish) after Minolta did it.
- cptskippy 8y ago
  True and his transgression was an easy one to make because most people will say "Mi..who?" They merged with Konica sometime in the early 2000s and exited the camera market. Minolta was never considered more than a prosumer camera maker, it's cameras lacked many essential features that professional photographers demanded in their SLRs.
  - foobar1962 8y ago
    Sony bought part of the Minolta/ Konica camera business. Minolta had an AF slr very early in the game iirc. They weren’t pro mainly because they didn’t have an extensive range of lenses ands accessories, and the lenses were mainly slow zooms.
    - stan_rogers 8y ago
      They actually had a pretty extensive range of lenses and accessories (bulk film backs, drives and grips, etc.), and had those cool white f/2.8 zooms and teles before Canon did. Some of those lenses, like the 24mm VFC (variable field curvature), were unique to the line and allowed a photographer to pull off shots that wouldn't be practical again until digital composition (focus stacking, etc.) came along. They also had a decent TTL flash system way ahead of the game - you could pull a full-on Joe McNally job, but you needed to do it cabled. Their real problem was dropping into and out of the pro market at irregular intervals. Every time the put together a killer, truly professional-level body system, the market reaction was, "yeah, I don't want to invest in a system that's going to be orphaned next week," which led to it being orphaned the next week. I'd already moved on to medium and large format when the Maxxum/Dynax/Alpha hit, but it was still maddening to see my old favourite shooting themselves in the foot over and over again.
      - apocrypher 8y ago
        I owned and used that VFC lens for many years. Variable Field Curvature. this can't be digitally recreated. its a really interesting lens and the reason why I may yet fall back into my Kodak habit of yore. Flash, on the Maxxum/Dynax AF cameras, from the get go, was incredible. Focus distance is critical for flash exposure. Minolta pioneered AF. Thry also played sloppy with a Honeywell patent, when we feared trade deficit to Japan, remember 4GL, 5GL... Originally Japanese manufacturers claimed solidarity. Then Minolta was left standing alone, stood up, and stupidly didn't settle. This was widely attributed to Minoru Tashima, he of Machinery and Industrial OpticAL Tashima. Reality, bad legal gamble lost to international politics. The punitive $100MM fine, hurt MINOLTA horribly, hence erratic pro equipment development. On the contrary to the above comments assertion, Minolta had mire fast glass than anyone. Edit, I used professionally almost every single MINOLTA camera and certainly every serious lens, from the SRT102b, to the last pre Sony, all home grown Dynax 7D... if you're curious, just find a good store with a Sony A99II on display. This is the model that'sgoing to demonstrate the ability of a camera to be a genuinely delightful experience, above even the A9. If you can afford it, my experience of the A9, I challenge anyone to take a technically bad photo with it. The A99II is a serious machine too, but it caters to a old school crowd and the new models, the reason why they have a all new lens mount, again, is the lenses are designed for use with in camera software correction of distortion and vignetting etc. I personally dislike that change, not that i can criticize the results, but, strikingly demarked by the A9, we have entered the software supremacy era. Its incredible.
  - girvo 8y ago
    Bah. Tell that to the amazing 40mm on my Minolta 7S! :)
  - anthonybsd 8y ago
    Right you are :). Actually at some point in the 90s I did drool over Minolta Maxxum, mostly because of crazy 1/12000 shutter speed, and flash sync speed of 1/300. Completely forgot about them. I guess I also forgot about Yashica which had a dubious advantage of AF and being able to mount manual Contax lenses.
snowwrestler 8y ago
Canon had high-performance lenses thanks to putting the AF motor in the lense (as I said). But their AF sensors lagged Nikon in their low-light sensitivity and their intelligence with moving objects. This is why most nature photographers did not move from Nikon to Canon until the digital era. Art Wolfe was just about the only big-name nature photographer on Canon for years. EDIT to add about auto exposure: the EOS-1N, released in 1995, had a monochrome 16-segment evaluative meter. The Nikon F5, released in 1996, had a 1,005 segment color-sensitive evaluative meter, which also incorporated focus distance from the lens. Essentially it took a 1 kilopixel digital photo in order to set the film exposure.
- lb1lf 8y ago
  Oooh, the F5. I've had one for fifteen years plus. To this day, the only camera I've owned which is actually a physical experience to shoot; the AF and film drive motors are actually strong enough for you to feel the torque they develop as you shoot. (The F5 could officially shoot 8fps; on a fresh set of batteries you would often get nine; this thing could focus, evaluate the exposure, advance the film, stop down the aperture and trigger the shutter _nine_ times a second.) The metering system can only be described as exquisite; after a few dozen rolls on the F5 I actually got into the (bad!) habit of not bracketing most of my color positive shots - the metering was spot on just about all the time, regardless of tricky conditions. I think I'll take it out for a shooting session tomorrow, it's been a few months since it last saw any use. Thanks for the reminder!

stan_rogers 8y ago

Yessir. They were first to break compatibility, immediately (ish) after Minolta did it.

cptskippy 8y ago
True and his transgression was an easy one to make because most people will say "Mi..who?" They merged with Konica sometime in the early 2000s and exited the camera market. Minolta was never considered more than a prosumer camera maker, it's cameras lacked many essential features that professional photographers demanded in their SLRs.
- foobar1962 8y ago
  Sony bought part of the Minolta/ Konica camera business. Minolta had an AF slr very early in the game iirc. They weren’t pro mainly because they didn’t have an extensive range of lenses ands accessories, and the lenses were mainly slow zooms.
  - stan_rogers 8y ago
    They actually had a pretty extensive range of lenses and accessories (bulk film backs, drives and grips, etc.), and had those cool white f/2.8 zooms and teles before Canon did. Some of those lenses, like the 24mm VFC (variable field curvature), were unique to the line and allowed a photographer to pull off shots that wouldn't be practical again until digital composition (focus stacking, etc.) came along. They also had a decent TTL flash system way ahead of the game - you could pull a full-on Joe McNally job, but you needed to do it cabled. Their real problem was dropping into and out of the pro market at irregular intervals. Every time the put together a killer, truly professional-level body system, the market reaction was, "yeah, I don't want to invest in a system that's going to be orphaned next week," which led to it being orphaned the next week. I'd already moved on to medium and large format when the Maxxum/Dynax/Alpha hit, but it was still maddening to see my old favourite shooting themselves in the foot over and over again.
    - apocrypher 8y ago
      I owned and used that VFC lens for many years. Variable Field Curvature. this can't be digitally recreated. its a really interesting lens and the reason why I may yet fall back into my Kodak habit of yore. Flash, on the Maxxum/Dynax AF cameras, from the get go, was incredible. Focus distance is critical for flash exposure. Minolta pioneered AF. Thry also played sloppy with a Honeywell patent, when we feared trade deficit to Japan, remember 4GL, 5GL... Originally Japanese manufacturers claimed solidarity. Then Minolta was left standing alone, stood up, and stupidly didn't settle. This was widely attributed to Minoru Tashima, he of Machinery and Industrial OpticAL Tashima. Reality, bad legal gamble lost to international politics. The punitive $100MM fine, hurt MINOLTA horribly, hence erratic pro equipment development. On the contrary to the above comments assertion, Minolta had mire fast glass than anyone. Edit, I used professionally almost every single MINOLTA camera and certainly every serious lens, from the SRT102b, to the last pre Sony, all home grown Dynax 7D... if you're curious, just find a good store with a Sony A99II on display. This is the model that'sgoing to demonstrate the ability of a camera to be a genuinely delightful experience, above even the A9. If you can afford it, my experience of the A9, I challenge anyone to take a technically bad photo with it. The A99II is a serious machine too, but it caters to a old school crowd and the new models, the reason why they have a all new lens mount, again, is the lenses are designed for use with in camera software correction of distortion and vignetting etc. I personally dislike that change, not that i can criticize the results, but, strikingly demarked by the A9, we have entered the software supremacy era. Its incredible.
- girvo 8y ago
  Bah. Tell that to the amazing 40mm on my Minolta 7S! :)
- anthonybsd 8y ago
  Right you are :). Actually at some point in the 90s I did drool over Minolta Maxxum, mostly because of crazy 1/12000 shutter speed, and flash sync speed of 1/300. Completely forgot about them. I guess I also forgot about Yashica which had a dubious advantage of AF and being able to mount manual Contax lenses.

snowwrestler 8y ago

Canon had high-performance lenses thanks to putting the AF motor in the lense (as I said). But their AF sensors lagged Nikon in their low-light sensitivity and their intelligence with moving objects. This is why most nature photographers did not move from Nikon to Canon until the digital era. Art Wolfe was just about the only big-name nature photographer on Canon for years. EDIT to add about auto exposure: the EOS-1N, released in 1995, had a monochrome 16-segment evaluative meter. The Nikon F5, released in 1996, had a 1,005 segment color-sensitive evaluative meter, which also incorporated focus distance from the lens. Essentially it took a 1 kilopixel digital photo in order to set the film exposure.

lb1lf 8y ago
Oooh, the F5. I've had one for fifteen years plus. To this day, the only camera I've owned which is actually a physical experience to shoot; the AF and film drive motors are actually strong enough for you to feel the torque they develop as you shoot. (The F5 could officially shoot 8fps; on a fresh set of batteries you would often get nine; this thing could focus, evaluate the exposure, advance the film, stop down the aperture and trigger the shutter _nine_ times a second.) The metering system can only be described as exquisite; after a few dozen rolls on the F5 I actually got into the (bad!) habit of not bracketing most of my color positive shots - the metering was spot on just about all the time, regardless of tricky conditions. I think I'll take it out for a shooting session tomorrow, it's been a few months since it last saw any use. Thanks for the reminder!