Hanging box

Got out the Minolta 50/1.4 out after a long while.

The Minolta 50/1.4 has been one of my favourite lenses. It's quite a story how I got hold of it. A couple of years earlier I had purchased the Minolta Dynax 5 for ₹19000/- (all my savings) odd from JJ Mehta & Sons. The 28-80 F3.5/6.3 lens on it was pretty decent but a faster lens with creamy bokeh was the dream. I had started hanging out on the online photography forums. One such was the Minolta forum.

There was a minor panic going on at that time as Minolta would probably shut shot and would never go digital. So a lot of the old photographers were jumping ship to Canon/Nikon. So there was a lot of old equipment for sale for reasonable prices. A photographer from Jackson, Minnesota USA had this 50/1.4 for sale for $100 + $10 US shipping. I did't have a credit card at that time so I think I used Rashmi's card to make the online payment via paypal and then reimbursed her. I had the lens shipped to Anthony in Texas. One of his friends traveled to India after about 6 months and got the lens to me.

But the wait was worth it: I instantly fell in love with this fantastic lens. The Naka photos, the Dombivili Fast photos were all shot with this lens on the film camera.

With the Sony A100 replacing my film camera this full frame lens was a little less used as it was about ~75mm on the corpped sensor, which I did not prefer.

It still sits on my shelf waiting for a full frame sensor...

Update 18-Nov-2020: I finally acquired a FF. A Sony A7R3 in Nov of last year. I also acquired a used LA-EA3 A-mount to EF-mount adapter. The Minolta 50 lives on.

Serious Observations of a Funny World