This lens is by far my favourite Minolta lens. If I had known about this lens earlier in my photography career, it would have prevented the purchase of at least 4 other lenses.
The lens consisted of 16 elements in 13 groups, with 9 rounded aperture blades, incredibly fast auto-focus, and a 3-D illusion, I have never seen duplicated in any 35mm lens.
This lens is a magic wedding, portrait, landscape, and even wildlife lens, featuring a solid steel body, and with the hood on, quite weather resistant.
With a 72mm filter diameter and a permanent tripod collar, this lens will be one of those lenses that never leaves your favourite camera. Even at its minimum aperture of F32, it details great sharpness all the way up to F2.8.
The Minolta Apochromatic lens comprises three elements that bring light of three distinct colors to a common focus. In simple terms, if a lens does not have APO, or “Apochromatic” in its description, the manufacturer decided that it should be a less good lens.
Sample Photos:
I’m very surprised that not every lens is apochromatic today, perhaps, this is fixed in the camera chips by digital manipulation?
Minolta’s colour coatings on lenses were the best. Canon in its day tried to compete with “S.S.C.” – Super Spectra Coated lenses, but even that could not come close to Minolta’s coatings. At the near end of Minolta’s golden years, Minolta spent a lot of time with Kodak to raise the standards of colour with “Kodak Wratten” and many other true to colour systems.