simple to use and handle, this camera is suitable for begginers.
it is also light and small.

biggest weaknes- no dof preview button. this is not just a weaknes, this is a HUGE minus for landscape photography.

this camera could have been an excellent learning tool for begginers if it had a dof preview button.
it's a very cheap camera, but if you brake it you'll find that it is very difficult to get decent service.

a begginer photographer who wants to get more serious would like to hold this camera for no more than a couple of years.

Customer Service

expensive and slow, due to the lack of current parts.

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x-700

Great first amateur camera
The Minolta 50mm 1.7 is still one of the best lenses I own
Glowing LED display in viewfinder very easy to use; simply match up the lights in manual mode

Slow shutter sync
Doesn't shoot at metered speed in Aperture Priority
Film counter broken
No DOF preview

It's a great camera for beginners, but it's had a couple of repair issues in the past few years (I've had it since 1987, so that's pretty good, I think).

First, the film counter doesn't work. No problem; I just kept shooting until I couldn't advance any longer.

Second, I just recently learned through a camera test with some slide film that while the metering in automatic mode will change when you shift the F-stop, the shutter speed itself doesn't change when you shoot. This means I have to shoot in manual mode, which is actually easy with the "double light" viewfinder."

Highly recommended camera. If you can get one used, I say go for it.

Customer Service

All I know is that it's too expensive to fix. Still, it's stil operating after 14 years.

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None