#NCP
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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.
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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.
#filmphotography #photography #minolta
Minolta: Tales of a Forgotten Camera Maker
A look back on the rise and fall of Minolta as a historical camera maker whose innovations and DNA live on to this day in digital cameras.
PetaPixel (petapixel.com)
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@coffeegeek A similar thing happened with Moleskine notebooks. It pains me when I see a display knowing theyโre not what made them renowned.
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Peter Nosko ๐ฉ๐ช-๐บ๐ธ ๐replied to CoffeeGeek last edited by
@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.
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@coffeegeek Necrobranding makes me sad too. I have a couple of vintage Yashica film cameras that I enjoy using, and I recently learned about the horrendous Yashica Y35 Kickstarter.
Yashica's 'Unexpected' Y35 Camera is Worse Than Anyone Expected
The Japanese brand Yashica stirred up a great deal of excitement in the photo world in 2017 by teasing its return to the camera industry. In October 2017,
PetaPixel (petapixel.com)
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@gregatron5 I didn't know Moleskine had sold / gone bankrupt / sold off the brand name / whatever. I just assumed it was the same company as always.
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@bk1e oh gawd. That link you gave me sent me down a 45 minute rabbit hole into the hellscape nightmare aliexpress junky thing that is necrobrand Yashica. Holy crap.
Their "film" canisters remind me vaguely of Minolta Maxxum's "creative cards" which just added / changed functionality on the cameras. I saw a review of the Y35 and a product tear down - what a piece of junk.