365cameras.com

The great thing about this site is the inspiration provided by the cameras that Rayment Kirby made. They’re beautiful. Stunning craftsmanship.

Also, the workshop section has some simple plans and great articles about large format camera construction.

I would love to see fully developed plans for these cameras. I’d buy them and I bet others would too. The first one I’d have to get would be the 4×5″ TLR Holy cow. Now that’s a cool camera.

If you have the urge to fix up an old camera, I have a good site for you. The Classic Camera Repair Forum

The site has several thousand posts over a varied landscape of cameras. This is a good place to learn some camera repair tricks and ask questions of people that might be helpful.

I greatly appreciated the free online camera repair manuals Be sure to check the links at the bottom of the page if you don’t see anything that fits your needs.

This also has some nice free camera repair articles.

The free camera instruction manuals are a welcome addtion.

This site has become one of my favorite stomping grounds lately.

I should say though that if you are considering working on a valuable camera and you haven’t done it before, you are impatient, you are lacking technique, you won’t pay for proper oil or proper tools, please have a qualified repair person fix your camera for you or donate it to me. 😉 There is no sense in ruining it.

One thing you might need is a donor camera or even a camera to fix up. Be sure you search intelligently and you should be able to find Parts Cameras on eBay

I’ve never mentioned it here. It never came up before, but I’m a Minolta lover.

The Minolta X-700 was the first camera I purchased once I got out of high school and didn’t have access to the Pentax cameras I first used. It was a beauty. It had a very nice, bright Acute-Matte screen. Good feel. Very nice glass. It wasn’t long before I just instinctively knew how to spin the f-stop ring and the shutter speed dial. It was and is still a part of me.

I still have that X-700 and I still love it. I’ve taken untold thousands of pictures on it without really any problems. I think I finally may have a scratch on my pressure plate and I don’t know how I did it. So, I’m checking out brand new (to me) 20-30 year old Minolta bodies to add to the collection. My local photo store doesn’t have these very often. Of course, I’ve been to ebay. What an amazing place to shop.

Anyway, to make a long story longer, I had to spend a few hours reading Minolta information a couple nights ago. I ended up on The Rokkor Files, www.rokkorfiles.com and realized I had never written about it. I love this site.

So what’s so great about it. First, it was built by someone with a love for Minolta. (Sadly, it seems he converted most of his gear to digital for his wedding photography business, but that’s another matter.)

Secondly, it is a fantastic resource. It has a guide to all the manual focus Minolta cameras, the lenses, accessories, advertising, and technical reports. There are links to purchase manuals for most Minolta photography equipment. It also has a brief but good links page. There are articles from Dick Sullivan’s SRT Resources. And if that isn’t enough, there is even a downloadable Minolta font.

So if you have a Minolta manual focus film camera, this is a great resource. If you don’t have a Minolta camera, why not? Get one. Like all film cameras these days, prices are down. Quality is extremely high. This is a great time to be picking up cameras you might have never owned. I have my eye on that cute little number over there. No her size isn’t 36-24-36. It’s XD11. And I think she’s looking at me.

Classic Minolta 35mm SLRs

Minolta 35mm SLR Lenses

Minolta Rangefinders