Minolta SRT 101 Vintage film camera with lens

Minolta SRT 101 

Minolta SR-T101 35mm SLR camera focal plane shutter shutter speeds from 1 sec to 1/1000. mirror lockup, a mechanical self-timer and a depth-of-field preview button Manual focus uses a PX625 cell for the metering system only. With a dead battery, all functions but the meter will continue to work

Classic Film camera 1966 - 1975

The SR-T101 was the first camera released in the SR-T Series in April 1966, and its success is shown by the exceptionally long period for which it was manufactured. The SR-T101 incorporated for the first time through the lens metering at full aperture, making the process of photography much more simple and opening up the world of photography to many newcomers.

However, it was not just the fact that the camera metered at full aperture that was revolutionary about the SR-T101. The camera actually incorporated the world's first matrix metering system, called the 'Contrast Light Compensator' system by Minolta. The system used two seperate metering cells, situated at different parts of the pentaprism. These cells measured the light falling on different parts of the viewfinder screen, and provide a reading that takes into account the contrast in a scene. As a result, the camera has the capacity to significantly reduce underexposure of shadows or other dark areas in a photo, by minimising the effect of particularly bright areas which are brighter than the real average of the scene.

While it sounds complex, it actually does work, and this fact helped the SR-T101 to become one of the most popular cameras of its era. Other key features of the camera included a viewfinder that displayed the selected shutter speed, mirror lock-up for use with non-retrofocus wide angle lenses, and a depth of field preview button that enabled the photographer to stop the lens down to the taking aperture to assess the depth of field.