Minolta X700 vs. Pentax ME

My first camera was a Minolta X700 and I bought new from my saved money when I was 15 years young. It is probably the camera I used much longer then any other camera I owe or owed. What´s more – for more than 15 years it was also the only camera I used.

This has changed a bit during the past years. I shoot film and have more than 30 different models of cameras. I must say though that I don´t buy cameras for the shelf. I buy them to shoot with them. But my wife made a good point when she asked me: "What do you need more than 30 different cameras for?" Mhm - what can I say here? Except that she is probably right.

I started to sell some point and shoot cameras after I tested each of them for weeks or months and I found one camera which is perfect for what I like and do with it (Minox 35 ML). But while I sold them I bought other cameras (rangefinder and SLRs). And space is becoming an issue.

Challenge Concept

I plan to concentrate on 5 - 10 camera models and sell the rest or put it away. And in order to find out what cameras should make it in this club of 5-10. And because I don´t realy care about figures, numbers and names, I will test cameras against each other. And I started with a Minolta X700 (which I bought two months ago for sentimental reasons and a Pentax ME which I bought two weeks ago after I had read nice stuff about her.

The setting is simple: I loaded both cameras with a Ilford HP5, walked around for two hours and took identical shots with both cameras aithe the same aperture (in aperture priority mode). At home I developed the two films in the same tank together, scan them and put the shots side by side to each other to be able see the differences. I don´t do any retouching. You see images as they came out of the scanner. The only form of post production I do is cut a more or less identical frames for the twin shots.

Twin Shots

I will post each challenge on facebook to hear the opinion of other photographers about what camera delivers the better result. The winning camera will be challenged by the next camera from my portfoliot.

I will probably start with identical systems. In this case it means SLR cameras. But in the end the challenge will be between cameras and systems: SLR, rangefinder, medium format and point and shoot. But film and settings will remain always the same.