Lens adaptor I purchased a Phoenix 1300mm lens for my minolta cameras, maxxum 7d digital and analogue. The lens adaptor that was supplied with the lens has no cantacts and when attached to the body and the shutter release pressed, the camera indicates that there is no lens attached. The company that I purchased the lens from in Queensland Australia, and Phoenix themselves no longer seem to be in business so Ihave no results from them. The Phoenix lens is a screw mount looks like early Pentax but not sure. Would you know of any lens adaptor suitable or any way that the adaptor supplied could be modified to function. I have also contacted Minolta Australia but as they have been absorbed by Sony they could not offer any solution.

There are lots of adopters you can buy, to work with lenses from other brands. Bower has lots of adopters, but the easy one is just a Nikon to Canon adopter. The lens is manual focus, so you can't win anything by searching for an expensive solution.

This is a common problem with the 7D. The shutter curtain will stick after several years of service. Put the camera in clean mode to get the curtain to lift, or send it to Sony to replace it. It was a design flaw by Minolta.

Here's an interesting website with a lot of informations about MC, MD and other Minolta lenses, also informations on adapters for new AF bodies: http://www.sds.com/mug/mf-lenses.html

The spots are dust on your sensor. You can clean these yourself but you must learn the techniques first. Google the words...cleaning a DSLR sensor. You will be taken to sites which will explain in detail how to do it and what supplies you will need. It may seem daunting at first, but it is really easy once you know how.

That is the soung of everything, including the lens & mirrors getting locked into place. It's normal. I wore out a Maxxum (after about 9,000 pictures) and bought another.

Quite right too. When the M42 adaptor is fitted there is absolutely no exchange of information between the lens and the body: M42 lenses pre-date all of those later developments. Your camera will also be unable to stop down the lens automatically when taking the picture, most M42 lenses don't even stop down automatically when connected to an M42 body.

You need to do things the old-fashioned way. Your camera needs to be set to meter manually, shutter priority mode may also be used. In manual mode you focus the lens as normal with the aperture ring set to the lowest aperture number (i.e.aperture is wide open).
You then make sure that the lens in in manual mode as well and stop down to whatever you want, if the image remains bright enough then you can adjust the precise focus using the hyperfocal principle if you like which takes advantage of the increased depth of field of a stopped down lens.
In manual mode, you then tell the camera what aperture you have set (read it from the lens barrel) and set the shutter speed using the camera's light meter to guide you. If using shutter priority mode then the camera will choose the shutter speed for you.
Check everything is set as you intend and press the shutter.

It all sounds long winded but is exactly how many of the world's greatest photos were taken and soon becomes second nature. You also learn far more about the relationship between aperture, shutter speed and ISO settings and will be able to talk about reciprocity like you know about it!

Your Minolta QTsi Maxxum takes a Konika Minolta AF lens. These lenses work on these Konika Minolta DSLR cameras:
DYNAX 5D / Maxxum 5D
DYNAX 7D / Maxxum 7D

The Minolta Maxxum 7000 uses a Minolta A mount, which is also used on the Sony Alpha series, as they bought out Minolta's technology. All Maxxum lenses should work for the most part on the Sony Alpha series of DSLR's, including the autofocus.

-John

Hello,
Try to take picture without memory card and observe that still camera goes to Off?

did you recently have the ccd replaced?