Konica Minolta Maxxum 9000 Film Camera

If you're a pro or just starting out in photography, this camera will deliver!

The 9000 was built as a no-nonsense tool for professional photographers.
It certainly has a classical professional feel about it, with great ergonomics and solid construction.
Most controls are easy to learn and situated where you need them, even if you have large hands.

The 9000 has 4 metering modes, selected by turning a dial on the rewind crank. The metered exposure settings can be locked by maintaining pressure on the autoexposure lock key, situated under your thumb on the back panel of the camera. The metering indicator in the viewfinder blinks if the ambient light level is outside the meter's range of accuracy.
Centre-weighted average metering With centre-weighted average metering the sensitivity is EV 1-20 with ISO 100 film and a 50mm f/1.4 lens.
Spot metering for mid-tones Meters a 5.5mm diameter circle (2.7% of the film frame) in the centre of the viewfinder. This metering mode is designed to correctly exposure a mid-grey tone (the traditional photographer's 18% grey card).
Spot metering for highlights Meters the same 5.5mm diameter circle as mid-tone spot-metering, then introduces a 2 1/4 stop overexposure. This metering mode is designed to correctly expose the light-toned highlights of the image, which would appear too dark (underexposed) if a mid-tone reading were used.
Spot metering for shadows Meters the same 5.5mm diameter circle as mid-tone spot-metering, then introduces a 2 3/4 stop underexposure. This metering mode is designed to correctly exposure dark-toned shadows in the image, which would appear too light (overexposed) if a mid-tone reading were used.

It's been around for years and still continues to work beautifully.

I have real sentimentality over this first generation of Minolta Autofocus cameras since they really take wonderful pictures. By today's standard they are ridiculously slow to focus. Often they go cranking all the way to the end of the focus range and then back again before finding the right focus. This can take three or more seconds, which can result in missing a shot. In the mid eighties that was pretty good, but the second generation of Minolta AF's are far better and the third generation better still. And they're all so ridiculously inexpensive on ebay that you end up spending about the same for any of the different generations of camera.

The main thing I don't like about the Minolta Maxxum 9000 is that it is manual wind unless you buy the autowinder separately. The combination is monstrously heavy. Hate to say it, but I prefer the next model down, the Maxxum 7000 since it does most of the things the 9000 can do, but it is compact and includes a built in motordrive that moves along at the reasonable clip of about 2 frames per second.

I do like the more intuitive controls on the 9000, though. Much more like the familiar controls on a more traditional camera. However, this entire generation, whether the 5000, 7000, or this camera, all suffer from bleeding on the LCD screens. This can be inconvenient to read part of the display, but not usually, and it doesn't impede the function of the camera. One remarkable thing about this camera is that it has a 1/4000th second fastest shutter speed. I wanted one to round out my collection, but, as I said there are so many better cameras for picture taking purposes that can be had for the same money. Therefore, I don't recommend this as a first choice.

One great thing to keep in mind though is that the lenses that work on this camera work on the modern Sony Alpha digital camera (Sony bought all of Minolta's technology and use it in their current line). Minolta made a phenomenal Autofocus 70 - 210 Zoom Lens, affectionately nicknamed "the Beercan" which is one of the finest lenses I have owned (I also have Nikkors, Zeiss and Leicas). You can pick one of these up on ebay anywhere between $30- $75. The images produced are razor sharp. If I choose to start shooting digital more often I might buy one of the Sony's just to be able to continue using my great older Minolta Lenses. If you can get a Maxxum with one of these lenses included it would be a really great bargain!

I ran a roll of film through the Maxxum 9000 recently and the images all came out very nicely exposed so the meter seems to be right on after all these years.