SRT - 101

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It was the very first camera my father gave me when i was 17.I used it for over another 15 years and i still find this a great and indestructible camera and its probably why the SRT-101 has been one of the most used camera by war reporter during the last 40 years.

The Minolta SR-T 101 is a 35mm manual focus SLR camera launched in 1966 by Chiyoda Kogaku. 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 construction is based on the innovative Minolta SR-7 model V camera of 1962. The SR-T however, has many 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 favor of the OM system.



The SR-T 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, as well as a battery check index mark indicating the required needle deflection for a healthy battery when a 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 black enamel while most metal parts are black chromed, but the wind lever is black anodised. The parts still chromed include the shutter-release button, the mirror lock-up knob, the depth-of-field preview button and the lens-release button.

Famous Users
Annie Leibovitz
William Eugene Smith

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