Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“My cameras [are] note takers for my mind, so I may place evidence before others…telling them why I am seldom bored.”— W. Eugene Smith`
The Minolta Prod 20 is a retro auto focus compact film camera that was made in 1990. It has a 35mm f/4.5 lens and includes a built-in flash. The Prod 20 was introduced before Minolta’s shotgun wedding to Konica but after the success of the even-more-retro Olympus O-Product that was introduced in 1988. The O-Product is a 35mm auto focus point-and-shoot camera that also has a 35mm f/3.5 lens along with a sperate flash that’s attached by means of a short, rubber cable. The O-Product was a limited edition and only 20,000 were made: 10,000 for the Japanese home market with the remaining 10,000 for the rest of the world. By comparison, only 20,000 Prod 20’s were built, all for the Japanese market.
The camera has a combination of aluminum and plastic construction although it feels heft at 15 oz. Even the box it came in had a retro look, containing a camera pouch made from faux deer hide and an imitation leather folder for framing two portraits. The provided strap is mostly useless; I’m thinking getting a Topo camera strap like the one on my Canon AL-1. The camera includes all of the features that made it great back in the Delorean’s heyday: Automatic DX coding, motor driven film advance along with a auto exposure mode with shutter speeds from 1/40 to 1/150 seconds that you can’t control.
In fact you can’t control anything after loading the film. Film loading is backwards; you place the film cassette in the right-hand side of the camera, lightly drag the film across to an orange colored mark on the left-hand side and then close the back. The camera then automatically loads the film. When you’re finished shooting the camera automatically rewinds the film. A 6v CR-P2 battery powers all the tiny motors inside the body that make all this happen. I bought a Duracell 223 Lithium battery at Batteries Plus for twenty bucks. Even after sitting on a shelf gathering dust and doing nothing for at least eleven years after I installed the new battery it fired right up. Not only that the exposure were perfect; more on that later.
When new, the Prod 20 cost $430; mine was a gift from my loving wife Mary who got it from a former Minolta employee and was delivered to me in the original box with all the accessories. You should be able to find one on eBay for prices as cheap as $55 or as high as $350 depending on condition. By comparison, an Olympus O-product will run $300 to $800, again depending on condition.
On a sunny but cool day—after all the recent snow and frigid temperatures—I took the Prod 20 with me on a causal photo walk around Cars and Coffee at the Vehicle Vault in Parker, Colorado. Mary even joined me for part of the walk. In operation, the Prod 20 is quiet. While photographing a Lamborghini it cranked its engine just as I was clicking the shutter and I didn’t hear the shutter or the motor, then again it was a Lamborghini… But even without any engine noise the shutter is almost Leica-quiet and even the motor dive (and rewind) is sorta quiet.
I shipped the film to The Darkroom on March 12 and received notification that they received the film on March 15. The scans were uploaded to my account on March 16. Just between us chickens, I didn’t expect that the images would be (aesthetically) all that great. And I was sorta right…
Continued on my car photography blog…
If you would like to send a roll of film for me to review or other stuff for these posts and my videos you can mail it to: Joe Farace, PO BOX 2081, PARKER, CO 80134