Minolta Maxxum 7000:
Innovative, Trend Setting, Classic!

Introduced in 1985, the Minolta Maxxum 7000 proved to be a milestone in the class of 35mm cameras. It was the first camera to feature the user-friendly functions of auto focus and motorized advanced films. Before the introduction of Minolta Maxxum 7000, photography was a strictly specialized field due to the complexities in the equipment of that time. But Maxxum 7000 later became the standard to which all other cameras had to rise to!

Maxxum 7000 is the standard configuration for amateur and professional single lens reflex cameras. It is the first of its kind to offer a body integrated AF design. But that isn’t it! Minolta introduced a multitude of new AF lenses built specially for the Maxxum 7000.

Before it exploded on to the scene, companies like Nikon, Pentax and Olympus dominated everyone’s camera choices. And to be fair to them, they did try to sell their cameras featuring auto focus technologies before Minolta. But Maxxum 7000 became a runaway success because of its ease of use and easy portability. It completely revolutionized the design concepts of other industry leaders. It took a chance on alienating its existing customers by dropping support for the older MC/MD mount. But its replacement, fully electronic lenses mount without any backward compatibility also proved to be quite popular, securing a major chunk of market for Minolta. Maxxum 7000 had the power to transform even a lay man into an amateur professional photographer!

Another amazing characteristic of the Minolta Maxxum 7000 is that all the sensors and motors were built in to the body of this amazingly fully-featured camera. The other cameras of that time, namely Nikon F3AF, Olympus OM-F had auto focus earlier than Maxxum 7000. But their use was just very cumbersome as it was just an add-on modification to existing camera body designs.

Besides auto focus, the Minolta Maxxum 7000 had manual, aperture priority, shutter priority, and program modes. It also adopted new, 21st century looks replacing the existing knobs and dials with pushbuttons, and it also introduced internal and external Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD’s). LCD’s were also quite a gamble on Minoltas part as they turned out to be very unpopular in old photographers but the new ones embraced them with fervor. The new camera body utilized a large amount of plastic composites which also came in for both praise and criticism.