On Mon, 27 Apr 1998 20:27:00 GMT, joe-b@dircon.co.uk.com (Joe Berenbaum) wrote:

>I am looking for any information I can find on the optical performance
>of Minolta manual focus (MC and MD) lenses, mostly the primes. I can't
>find much on the web, which isn't surprising since many of these
>lenses appeared before the modern (magazine) lens tests were
>developed. If anyone has any information or knows where to find it, I
>would be grateful for the info. Any subjective impressions would be
>useful also- if anyone knows of particularly good or bad optics I
>would really like to know. Is/was there a manual focus Minolta lens
>that you really liked? In particular I am interested in the various
>24mm and 28mm lenses.

I have tried some of the older Minolta manual lenses (16mm, 28mm
f2.8, 50mm f1.7, 135mm f3.5, 250mm f5.6) and a few AF Minoltas
(28mm, 50mm f2.8 macro, 35-105mm, 100-300mm). The MF wides were
good well stopped down, but soft at the edges/corners at wide stops,
the fast 50 was quite good, as were the 135mm f3.5 and 250 mirror.
(BTW, Leitz "borrows" some Minolta lenses to market as their own,
like the 16, 70-200, and 500 mirror...). Other than the really
excellent 50mm f2.8 macro, I was not impressed with the AF Minolta
lenses I tried. I think older Minolta MF lenses are a good buy.