Pekka Buttler, 07/2025
Note please: Alike many Japanese companies, Minolta was active in many fields. This history will focus on aspects related to interchangeable lenses and cameras that use them.
Beginnings
The company that would eventually develop into the Minolta that manufactured this lens was formed in 1928 as (Nichidoku Shashinki Shōten 日独写真機商店) – a company aiming to produce cameras in Japan using parts (especially shutter mechanisms) sourced from Germany. Initially, the company even employed German camera technicians. During its first years, the company launched several cameras combining locally produced with imported parts. In 1931 the company was renamed Molta Gōshi-gaisha (モルタ合資会社) 1 and soon thereafter the German technicians left the company. The contemporary name Minolta was first used for a camera model in 1933.
In 1937 the company changed its name to Chiyoda Kōgaku Seikō K.K. (千代田光学精工㈱, meaning Chiyoda Optics and Precision Industry Co., Ltd.), and continued to focus on camera manufacture until Japan’s increasing war footing led to the company increasingly focusing on the war effort. After the war Minolta quickly went back to camera manufacture, but as the company also absorbed what used to have been a navy optics manufacture, Minolta suddenly was well placed to produce cameras entirely in house. Hence, the early postwar years saw Minolta both producing TLR’s and folding cameras for medium format film, 35 mm viewfinder and rangefinder cameras, and 16 mm subminiature cameras.
1958 and the birth of the Minolta SLR
In 1958 Minolta introduced the SR-2 single-lens reflex camera. That camera was fairly advanced and utilised many of the technologies and approaches that we today expect from an SLR (pentaprism, instant return mirror, lever winding), but it also introduced a proprietary bayonet lens mount that allowed open-aperture composition and focusing (on compatible lenses). The initial (1958–1960) lineup of lenses was a combination of auto aperture lenses2 combined with preset aperture lenses3, but the phasing out of preset aperture lenses in favour of auto aperture lenses began immediately and soon only supertele lenses and budget versions were available with preset apertures.
It was soon evident that Minolta’s adventure in SLR-land would be a success. Spurred on by those expectations, the company in 1962 changed its name to Minolta Camera K.K. Minolta did not rest on its laurels. While not always the company at the leading edge of development, Minolta often improved on others’ innovations to make them truly effective. For instance Minolta was not the first SLR manufacturer to offer through-the-lens metering (that honour goes to Topcon), but many credit the Minolta SR-T 101 for being the first economically competitive SLR to have ironed out the wrinkles with TTL-metering.
To facilitate the continuous technological innovation, also the Minolta SR lens mount had to keep up. In the era from 1958 to 1985 Minolta made many improvements and extensions to the Minolta SR mount (which in part leads to the confusion why some call it the Minolta MD mount). In brief, the Minolta SR mount went through 4 major generations:
• SR (1958–66): Basic bayonet shape, but no lens–camera communication. Preset aperture lenses.
• AR (1958–67): Same bayonet, with lever for allowing camera to stop down the aperture. Auto aperture lenses.
• MC (1966–76). Same as AR, but now with an extension on the base of the aperture ring (meter coupling) allowing the lens to indicate its selected aperture to a compatible body, hence allowing open-aperture metering and aperture priority auto exposure.
• MD (1977–19964). Same as MC, but now with another extension on the base of the aperture ring to communicate the lens’ minimum aperture (a piece of information crucial for facilitating shutter priority and program auto exposure).
More details of the internal progression of the Minolta SR mount is given in the JAPB article on the Minolta SR mount.
Importantly, all generations of the Minolta SR mount are backwards compatible, meaning that you can mount any 1958 Minolta SR/AR lens on a 1995 Minolta X-370s and it would work just as on a 1958 SR-2). Knowing how much other makers (e.g. Nikon) struggled with this, that is not a minor accomplishment.
Side note: the Leica CL/Minolta CLE and Minolta Leica M mount lenses
In the early 1970s Leica of Germany and Minolta of Japan entered a strategic technological partnership leading to various collaborations regarding both lenses (some Minolta lenses were also sold as Leica lenses), camera components (the shutter assembly in the Leica R4 was developed by Minolta) as well as entire cameras (the 1973 Leica CL camera was co.designed by Leitz and Minolta and manufactured by Minolta in Osaka). After Leica discontinued selling the Leica CL, Minolta in 1980 introduced the Minolta CLE – a rangefinder combining technologies from the Leica CL and the Minolta XG-series SLRs. In tandem with the Minolta CLE, Minolta also introduced a trio of Leica M mount lenses (28/2.8, 40/2 and 90/4) but the CLE is obviously compatible with any Leica M mount lens.
1985 and Minolta as the forerunner of the AF revolution
In 1985 Minolta beat its entire field of rivals to the punch by introducing the Minolta 7000 AF 5 – the world’s first working autofocus SLR body, its attendant line of autofocus lenses, and a new lens mount (the Minolta A or ⍺ mount). In a move that angered anyone who had an investment in Minolta SR lenses 6, the new lens mount would not only be different, but also sported a flange focal distance longer than the Minolta SR mount, meaning that existing lenses could not be used at infinity without using an adapter with optics (which leads to both a mild deterioration of image quality as well as a mild teleconversion).
While Minolta still introduced a small number of Minolta SR mount compatible camera bodies after 1985, development of Minolta SR optics and bodies effectively ended as Minolta put all its brawn into making its AF bet a success. Throughout the next decades Minolta kept its emphasis on SLR development, including further developing the new autofocus mount (see details on those developments in the JAPB article on the Minolta/Sony A mount).
The shift of mainstream SLR photography from manual focus to autofocus did – in retrospect – turn out to be a watershed moment for the Japanese (and indeed the global) high-end photographic industry. In terms of SLRs, not only did it lead to a thinning of the herd with previously respected contenders (like Fuji and Konica) calling it quits and focusing on other segments, it also led to a reordering of the field with some actors being effectively downgraded into niche products (like Olympus or Yashica), with other actors effectively gaining a boost (like Minolta). In Minolta’s case this boost was massive, briefly lifting Minolta to the having the largest market share in the SLR segment, until in the 1990s being first overtaken by Canon and later by Nikon. As the era of the film SLR was drawing to a close, Canon and Nikon were the undisputed market leaders, with Pentax and Minolta making up the second tier (and other remaining actors being in various related niches).
The early 2000s and the advent of the dSLR and the end of Minolta.
Pop quiz: Of the first 5 digital SLR models brought to market, how many were made by Canon, Nikon and Minolta respectively? Answer: They were all manufactured by Kodak7.
The advent of digital professional photography not only led to another thinning of the herd, it also created a moment where the previously dominant incumbents (Canon, Minolta, Nikon and Pentax) were vulnerable. Also this was a moment which allowed both new actors to try to enter the new market early, along with companies that had already called it quits on the SLR segment (such as Fuji and Olympus).
After having been the forerunner of the AF revolution in 1985, Minolta dropped the ball with the introduction of the dSLR. Badly. While Minolta had been manufacturing digital point and shoots since 1998 and even had introduced an interchangeable lens digital camera in 1999 (the Minolta RD-3000 has to be a contender for the ‘worst technology bet’), it was clear that Minolta did not have a vision for where the industry was going (or where they’d like to take it). As a result Minolta resorted to trying to build partnerships, first leading to merging with Konica (into Konica Minolta Holdings) and entering a strategic partnership with Sony around sensor technology. In the end this all was too little too late.
In 2004 as Minolta (at that time already Konica Minolta) launched its first dSLR (the Dynax/Maxxum/Alpha 7D) to allow its existing user base to use their lenses on a Minolta body Canon and Nikon were solidly entrenched in the dSLR market with Pentax, Fujifilm, Olympus and even Sigma carving up the rest. Too many Minolta photographers had already sold their gear and invested in (most likely) Canon or Nikon systems for the Dynax 7D (or the 5D that followed a year later) to have made any significant impact on the market (even they were very good and in some ways even groundbreaking cameras8).
In 2006 Konica Minolta Holdings sells its camera business including patents to Sony, which after a short rethink starts manufacturing dSLRs (before moving on to spearhead the mirrorless revolution).
Footnotes
- ‘Molta’ was a contraction of “Mechanismus Optik und Linsen von Tashima” ( Engl: “Mechanism, Optics and Lenses by Tashima”), indicating that German influence in the company were still quite strong. ↩︎
- 1958-1960 auto aperture lenses: 35/2.8; 55/1.8; 55/2; 100/3.5; 135/2.8; 200/3.5 ↩︎
- 1958-1960 preset aperture lenses: 35/4; 100/4; 135/2.8 ;135/4; 250/4; 300/4.5; 600/5.6 ↩︎
- While Minolta went all-in with the autofocus revolution (see next), it continued manufacturing some Minolta SR bodies and lenses until 1996. ↩︎
- Minolta is one of those companies that made a habit of naming products differently in different markets, and unless you’re aware of this, it will make your head spin. The Minolta 7000 AF would be called the Maxxum 7000 in the Americas, and the Alpha 7000 in Japan. More problematically, this would lead to some situations where very similar monikers would be used in different markets for wildly different cameras.
Also, those lenses that would carry the name ROKKOR in the rest of the world would regularly be branded ROKKOR-X in the Americas. ↩︎ - Canon would do exactly the same two years later. ↩︎
- Admittedly in co-operation with Canon and Nikon, but Kodak really did own the advent of digital SLR photography. ↩︎
- The Maxxum 7D was the first dSLR to include in-body image stabilisation (IBIS) and reviewers ↩︎