Minolta SR-T 101

The Minolta SR-T 101 is a 35mm manual focus SLR camera with Through-The-Lens exposure metering - TTL for short, that was launched in 1966 by Minolta Camera Co. Staying in production for ten years with only minor changes, proves the thorough effort being put into the development of the camera before the introduction. The design is based on the innovative Minolta SR-7 model V camera of 1962, but the principal design is inherited from the original 1958 Minolta SR-2. The SR-T 101 however, has several significant features apart from the TTL meter. The most significant one is perhaps the full aperture metering facility, automatically compensating for the at any time fitted lens' maximum aperture, a feature it took twelve more years for Nikon to figure out how to accomplish. Full aperture TTL metering was commercially first realised in the brilliant Tokyo Kogaku Topcon RE-Super, a feature first realised in a screw mount camera by the introduction of the Olympus Kogaku Olympus FTL, their first full frame 35mm SLR in 1971, but which was abandoned one year later in favour of the remarkable OM system.

The SR-T 101 has an extremely bright finder with a central micro prism focusing aid that in most cases proves to be very convenient, requiring no apparent lines in the motive, since all out of focus objects appear to shimmer. All relevant exposure information is visible in the finder, including a battery check index mark showing the required meter needle deflection for a healthy battery when the ON/OFF meter switch on the camera base is set to BC.

The SR-T 101 was also made available in black. The top cover and the base plate are finished in black enamel while most metal parts are black chromed, but the wind lever is black anodised. The parts still chromed, to name the most obvious ones, include the shutter-release button, the mirror lock-up knob, the depth-of-field preview button and the lens-release button.