The Film Retriever

I didn't really need a Minolta XD-7 but I did want one. Having heard and read so many good things about it, i thought i should go through that auction site and see what is available. Ten minutes later and £28 less, there i had it, an immaculate XD-7 with a new leatherette that no one wanted to buy !!! The XD-7 is a fantastic camera that does not hide its professional aspirations. Althought not meant to compete in the professional grade arena (Minolta had the XM for that role) you could see this camera as the professional sibling of the X-700 - a camera which i really love - or see the X-700 as a scale down version of the XD-7 (if that help better). So what is different? First of all the shutter. In the XD-7 we find a Seiko MFC shutter instead of the more simple (but equally reliable?) cloth shutter of the X-700. The mirror box is also different, shock and noise absorbers are employed that makes the XD-7 more quiet than the X-700 (the difference is not huge bu...