Minolta MD lenses
Minolta used the essentially the same lens mount for all their manual focus SLR cameras from the late 1950s through to the late 1980s. They called this lens mount the 'SR' mount. They only abandoned the SR mount when the introduced their auto focus SLRS in the mid 1980s. Needless to say the SR mount went through a number of evolutions through this 30 year period. SR lenses can be divided into three broad classes:
- Early lenses (late 1950s and 1960s)
- Early SR mount lenses were generally designed for cameras with either no metering or non-TTL metering. The have no metering links between the lens and the camera and mostly either completely manual or preset apertures.
- MC lenses (late 1960s to late 1970s)
- MC lenses were given communication pins to allow the lenses couple with the TTL metering systems of Minolta's 1970s era SLR cameras
- MD lenses (late 1970s and 1980s)
- MD lenses got an additional communication tab to allow the more sophisticated SLRs of the late 1970s and 1980s to automatically control the aperture. This allowed these cameras to provide shutter speed priority and fully programmed automatic exposure modes. These lenses can distinguished by the smallest aperture being green to indicate the aperture setting required for these modes to operate correctly.
Within each of these classes there are a number of generations. For example, later MD class lenses tend to be much smaller than earlier MD lenses and the tend to have 49mm instead of 55mm filter threads. Later MD lenses also gain a lock for the green smallest aperture setting. All my Minolta SR lenses of of the MD type. As you can see from the above photograph I have a few such lenses but on this page I'll concentrate on the once I use regularly:
