Let’s Talk About…My Minolta SRT-202
It’s the very first camera I purchased after high school when I got serious about photography.
I believe, if my memory serves me right, I purchase this camera in the spring of 1978 from J.C. Penney (yes, they sold great cameras). It came with a 50mm f/1.4 lens and I also purchased a 200mm telephoto as well that actually had the J.C.Penney name on it. Along with the camera and lenses it came with a cheap brown hard case camera bag. I used this camera and lenses up until around the year 2000, give or take a couple of years.
The Minolta SRT-202
My first good camera after high school
One afternoon I was photographing a friends band at an outdoor street dance event in my local town. The camera was attached to a handle mount flash when suddenly it became disconnected from the bracket and crashed to the hard cement parking lot. Since the camera was made entirely of metal, it put a sizeable dent on the top and from that day it never worked again. I think that dent jammed a bunch of gears and it probably could have been easily fixed.
To this day I don’t know exactly what happened to that camera and lens kit. I don’t recall if I sold it to a friend or just plain lost the entire system, or if it was stolen.
I liked that camera so much that I purchased another one on eBay for relatively cheap along with the identical lens (minus the 200mm telephoto). That eBay purchase was a great deal and the camera is in pristine condition.
The camera is entirely manual operation and no battery is used to operate it. There IS a battery to operate the internal meter, but you can surely use it without.
The Minolta SRT-202 came out in 1975 and there has been a few minor updates to it. Mine is a 1978 model.
Minolta SRT-101
First generation from 1966 with the black shutter speed dial.
I also purchased a couple of SRT-101’s, (3 to be exact) which those came out in 1966. The original ones have a black shutter speed dial, those are considered first generation. Of course they made a few minor improvements and went to the chrome colored shutter speed dial. My thought was to fix them and resell, as the shutter is jammed on 2 of them.
These are awesome cameras and there are thousands of them still available for a very affordable price on eBay, Facebook Marketplace, etc. If you want to learn the basics of photography, I’d highly recommend starting off with a fully manual camera.