Some mamak in town, I met up with some A-mount hackers. This is the coolest sling bag I’ve seen, which would fit my style if I liked having a camera on my back.

A deceased Minolta 9xi, the world’s fastest autofocus SLR back in 1992. God bless its soul.

The pentaprism.

Full-frame mirror assembly next to an APS-C sized mirror on the Sony Alpha 100.

Viewfinder and the LED display below.

The shutter assembly was some amazing design – it had 2 shutters coming from top and bottom, and this enabled the world’s fastest shutter speed of 1/12000th of a second. (And a flash sync of 1/300th of a second.)

Two powerful motors – the left one advances the film at 4.5 frames per second, the right one definitely drives the screw that focuses the lenses. This was the fastest AF body in 1992 (and its motor was seen in the Minolta Dynax 7, too.)

In between those two is the AF unit, with 3 hex screws. These 3 screws, accessible from the bottom of the camera under a sticker (which carries over to Sony dSLRs, even) can be adjusted to fix backfocus, frontfocus and alignment problems.

A rather dark screen. David the owner/hacker says Nikon did this part a lot better.

Of course, Minolta designed this better – the 5xi also has this wide grip. Notice that the thumb does not curl up at all. The thumb rests comfortably. While it did look odd when I saw a 7xi, I finally understood why.

Screw you. No, screw lenses.

This is as much as we could piece together. The AF/MF switch (below the lens release, not clear in picture) is not a switch but a spring-loaded toggle. Very useful (though a 2-position switch is easier for n00bs to remember if they’re in AF or MF mode.)

Justin then enforced brutality upon it to further disassemble the already broken shutter assembly.

The mirror, and the half-mirror underneath that reflects some light to the AF unit below.

Very hard to wipe clean.

Internally, a lot of parts were Mitsubishi chips.

The shutter assembly was made by Nidec Copal Electronics.

Date of birth. 24th September 1992.

Motor.

(Cut to Ament’s pop-up flash diffuser, blu-tacked to the hotshoe cover. What, your camera does not come with a hotshoe cover?)

Ament with the A-mount bling.

Justin enforced more brutality and got this – the AF unit. The shiny bits are the microlenses that focus light onto the AF sensors.

Four AF points.

Surprise a lens cap shot! Oh, and all shots were taken with either my Minolta 50mm F1.4 or Justin’s Sony 100mm F2.8 Macro. It is a superb lens, with great liquid color and bokeh. I dare say better than the Tamron 90mm F2.8 Macro, because it does not make tiny specks look like donuts. The Tamron does that and it’s not pretty!