This makes me incredibly sad.
Minolta, a storied name in photography gear, indeed one of the true leaders in autofocus, innovative cameras in the 1980s, long gone now, but some crappy company has bought the name, and slaps it on the shittiest, crappiest white label $99 cameras coming out of China.
So... sad. I cut my photographic teeth on the Minolta Maxxum system.
I hate, hate HATE when money grabbing, no-ethics companies do this kind of shit.
EDIT: there is one cool thing to come out of Minolta's demise: after they merged with Konica, Sony bought their entire digital SLR division (I think around 2008 or 2010?) and all of Sony's excellent entries into digital photography basically stem from that purchase.
In a way, if you buy a Sony A7R today, you're kinda buying a Minolta camera.
If you want to know more about Minolta and its history with film (and digital) cameras, Petapixel had an awesome article covering the brand a year or two ago.
The XG-7 and XD-11 were beautiful and beautifully built machines.
@coffeegeek
I had an SRT-200 with a Rokkor 50mm f2.8 lens for so long that the case disintegrated.
I foolishly sold it.
@RealGene @coffeegeek I still have mine, bought body-only in the 80s using my meager cash savings from my paper route. For some reason, always had a Vivitar lens setup with it.
@coffeegeek I bought a minolta 7000 in university - not the best return on investment but it was a pleasure to use !
@coffeegeek
I don't know if they made still cameras, but my dad had a movie camera in the 60s made by Bell & Howell. Now there's a name that's been used for everything under the sun. I still see stuff advertised on broadcast TV with that brand.
I believe it was this one.
@coffeegeek @Verso I grew up with Minolta, too, and still have a few of my dad’s old film bodies. I bought into the Sony ecosystem because I could re-use all his lenses… right before they changed the mount.