Home > Consumer Reviews > Minolta Maxxum 5 Date 35mm SLR Camera (Body only)

This camera is really marvelous, pretty light to lug around and superb performance. The following features are the ones which makes it a great buy for the price
- Eye Start (I love it, this feature is not there in Maxxum 4)
- 9 point autofocus, focus lock
- fully automatic mode, shutter-priority/aperture-priority and fully manual modes
- red-eye reduction, in-built pop-up flash
- convenient pre-set program modes (portrait,landscape,close-up,sports and night portrait)
- upto 9 multiple exposures

the film loading mechanism is smooth and easy, though it could have done with a warning message (rather than a blinking '0') when film is not loaded properly.

Has focus indicator, locks shutter when still focussing (can happen when using zoom telephoto lenses), has exposure range warnings, shutter speed warnings (if the recommended aperture or shutter speed is outside the range of your lens), the eye-sensor could have been better, but this drawback can be overcome with the exposure preview button, all in all I'm very satisfied with this camera.

Note: don't compare it with professional grade cameras like Nikon F 100... this camera does not have a color database like the pro-grades, so your exposure might be off by 1-2 stops when shooting extremely bright/dark subjects due to 'mid-tone'ing.

I have one of these that I use on occasion. I shoot with a Digital SLR, but I do have to tell you that this camera really surprised me. The clarity of the pictures is astounding! I got mine with the 28-100mm zoom lens and I love it. I use it to take film shots of landscapes and portraits and compare them to the digital shots I get from my Nikon D-70.