Minolta X-600 (1983)

Name: Minolta X-600
Brand: Minolta

The Minolta X-600 is one of the rarest and least understood cameras Minolta ever made. It is a manual-focus 35mm SLR released in Japan in 1983, at roughly $400, and it anticipated the autofocus revolution the company would unleash two years later with the Maxxum 7000. Only around 10,000 are thought to have been built, and surviving documentation is thin. The camera keeps the classic SR-mount manual-focus system, but adds a focus-assist feature that reads the lens's maximum aperture to judge focus accuracy. A green LED dot in the viewfinder confirms focus.

The X-600 is often called a "missing link" between Minolta's manual-focus X-series and the autofocus Maxxum line. Next to its stablemate the X-700, it's a much more basic body - it lacks the X-700's top-mounted shutter speed dial. The late Herbert Keppler wrote in Pop Photo (1983) about receiving an express package from Minolta R&D in Osaka containing the X-600, and came away with the impression that it was not a production camera. Production examples clearly exist, though, and the camera was sold new in Japan. The English-language manual exists only in Japanese, which has kept it obscure in Western collector circles.

What little else is known comes from collector chatter. The X-600 appears on a German forum list of rare Minolta items worth hunting, alongside the Power Grip I and II and the MD 24-50/4.0 lens, with the observation that these things almost never show up on eBay. A Russian classified listing describes it as "very rare" and in excellent condition. It has also been the subject of a "Monday Mystery Camera" blog post and a YouTube overview video covering its rarity and market position.