By the late 60s, Minolta was so well-regarded for their camera electronics engineering that Leitz, who was peerless in optical design at the time, sought a partnership to develop the electronics for their compact Leica, or Leitz Camera. Minolta thought they could learn a thing or two about optics from Leitz and the companies partnered in 1972. This resulted in improvements to the already excellent optical quality of the Minolta MC/MD lenses, large commercial successes for Leica with cameras like the Leica CL, an ultra-compact relative to its big brother the Leica M. Of course, Minolta also continued to excel at electronics and camera body innovation throughout the 70s and 80s.

“THEY WERE well-made and widely regarded as some of the most innovative cameras of their time but were not as robust as competing Nikon and Canon models. MINOLTA SLRS also lacked important professional features, BUT appeaLED to serious amateur photographers with innovation and high-quality optics.” - The internet

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the MC/MD lenses and SLRs is when and why the line ended. In 1985, Minolta introduced the first autofocus SLR, branded as the Maxxum-7000 in the United States and α-7000 in Japan, marking the end of the manual focus MC/MD lines of lenses and SLRs and the beginning of autofocus Minolta α SLRs, that incorporated a new mount that would eventually become today's Sony A-mount. Although Minolta was not the first to offer an autofocus camera (that was Konica), the α-7000 was the first hugely successful autofocus SLR, winning awards like European Camera of the Year, Camera Grand Prix, and Inter-Camera International. The α line went on to define Minolta for a generation of photographers, and Minolta became the leading camera maker in the United States by the early 1990s.

Ultimately, the α-7000 autofocus technology that propelled Minolta to the forefront of the industry, and the MC/MD line of lenses and SLRs to the vinyl record shops of San Francisco, would also be its undoing at the hands of patent lawyers from United States-based Honeywell.

In 1992, at a time of heightened trade and manufacturing tensions between the United States and Japan, a high-profile lawsuit ruled that Minolta had violated three Honeywell patents and ordered Minolta to pay Honeywell $127.6M, with an injunction forbidding the sale of any cameras with the technology in the United States. This devastated Minolta financially, but they managed to hang on by innovating through the 1990s and early 2000s, continuing to win awards for the α SLR line, and developing a new Advanced Photo System (APS) film sized SLR, a long-awaited professional-grade SLR called the α-9, and their last Minolta camera in 2003, the DiMAGE A1, featuring an industry first in-body image stabilization. Although Minolta's merger with Konica only lasted from 2003 to 2006, they produced the α-5 and α-7 SLRs with in-body image stabilization and, critically, started a joint venture with Sony on advanced CCD and CMOS digital sensor technology.

The remainder of this story is recent history. Sony bought Konica Minolta's camera division in 2006 and right out of the gate, Sony won Popular Photography's 2006 Camera of the Year award with the Sony α-100 SLR. This camera was essentially a re-labeled Konica Minolta α-5 with sensor and screen improvements, both specialties of Sony. Despite the promise of A-mount with Sony sensor technologies, the newly established division still had an uphill battle in the DSLR market against industry giants Canon and Nikon. The Minolta culture of innovation coupled with Sony engineering pedigree in screen and sensor technologies resulted in the A-mount evolution to Digital Single-Lens Translucent (DSLT) technology, and a new market focus, mirrorless cameras using a new E-mount.

Sony released a series of compact mirrorless cameras, in APS-C followed by full-frame, and eventually full-frame in-body image stabilization models, all re-branded as α. Critical to the α mirrorless line's success, vintage lenses have been adaptable from the beginning using simple adapters. Unlike Canon and Nikon, Sony has also licensed full autofocus connections to third-party lens manufacturers like Zeiss, and with the α7R II, α7 II, and α6300, allowed third parties full access to Phase Detect Autofocus, allowing autofocus with competitors' lenses like Canon, and most recently autofocus with the Techart Pro and manual focus lenses like the Minolta MC/MD.

So we've come full circle. The Minolta MC and MD lenses are all pre-autofocus, pre-image stabilization late-60s through early-80s lenses that give up little in terms of image quality relative to modern lenses. The α7R II is a full-lineage in-body image stabilization Minolta α, that's now a Sony because of the autofocus debacle of the late 80s and early 90s, but packing a mirrorless design and an un-rivaled Sony 42MP backside-illuminated full-frame sensor. Fittingly, I use a Techart Pro autofocus adapter, only made possible by Sony α mirrorless and their current liberal policies on autofocus technology. What an interesting time in the Minolta saga.

THE REVIEWS

Before getting further, it's important to call out that not all vintage lenses are created equal. Thanks to some great information and inspiration on the internet, most specifically from Phillip Reeve, The Rokkor Files, and whoever created The Minolta List, I was able to make very educated decisions on which lenses to choose and what to expect. After thoroughly researching these sites, here are the lenses I have collected, my general experience, and comparisons against some modern Sony/Zeiss FE lenses.