[edawn]

As someone who grew up with a Dad who used Minolta (along with a dark room for a few years), and as someone who has personally used various Minolta cameras over the past 5 or 6 years, (recently buying the KM 5D), I'm saddened to see the name Minolta leaving cameras forever. I'm thinking that I have a collector's item by the fact that I own the last camera produced to carry that name!

It does appear that Sony will take over what has already been done by KM. We can only hope they actually will improve on it! I really don't like the idea of upgrading my camera in a few years to something that uses Memory Stick. :P Maybe they'll stick with that just for their compact cameras? They won't be starting from scratch, so if they don't come up with something pretty good right out of the gates, it will be their own fault and possibly undoing. A lot of the KM crowd has been on pins and needles for sometime about the next rumored DSLR. People are wondering and hoping that something will be revealed at PMA next month.

This has all caused quite a raucous over at dpreview (and everywhere, I'm sure). Some are trying to decide if they should jump ship. Some are concerned about support and warranty coverage. Some are concerned about future lens offerings, which is still under KM jurisdiction, if I understand correctly. Some are concerned about the value of their current investment into Minolta equipment. Some are concerned about what the upgrade path will look like. I think Sony has an opportunity here, and I just hope they don't mess it up! There are plenty of Minolta users out there; it would seem a company that does a decent job could make a living off of us!

I still like my KM 5D. The fact that the company has a different name now doesn't suddenly change the things I like about my system. I think only time will tell if I will still like the offerings of my chosen system in a few years. Since I'm not a pro, I have tons to learn and improve upon, so what I have now will work great for that. (The whole...it's the photographer, not the equipment...deal!) I'll just have to pay attention to what's going on to figure out if I'll still want to be using the Minolta mount when I'm ready to move up. If quality lenses are still available and if camera bodies are improved upon, in the spirit of what Minolta has offered already, then I think I'll probably stay where I am. I certainly am for now! If my current equipment ends up not being worth much in a few years...well, I hope that I can just relax in the knowledge that I used it well, improved my abilities, didn't spend a complete fortune buying-in to begin with, and know that my lenses will still work with film systems. I don't think film is going away quite yet, even if Nikon has decided to leave that for someone else. However, I will say that I don't think I'd encourage someone to buy into KM-Sony (or...whatever...) tomorrow, just because of all the unanswered questions there are at this moment.

Anyway, as a regular here at the Camel, and as a Minolta user, I just thought I should throw out my take on the KM news.

Elaine