I’ve owned Minolta cameras my whole life. Guess I need a new brand. Minolta is abandoning the camera market.
TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s Konica Minolta Holdings Inc. (4902.T) said on Thursday it would withdraw from the camera and color film businesses, marking the end to one of the best known brands in the photography world.
As part of the surprise move, Konica Minolta said it would sell a portion of its digital single lens reflex (SLR) camera assets to Sony Corp. (6758.T) for an undisclosed sum and cease production of compact cameras by March.
The company said it would stop making photographic film and color paper by March 2007, pulling out of a market shrinking more than 20 percent a year due to the spread of digital cameras, which don’t use film to store images.
Yeah, I know it’s not a topic I normally blog about. But, hey, it was my brand of choice for cameras…
Chasing the Wind 
This makes me sad. The Eye of Minolta is closing.
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I feel for you, honest. I was informed this week that MY camera maker of choice (Nikon) has decided to phase out it’s film cameras. While this isn’t as horrific as losing the camera make all together, I still see it as an end of an era.
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et tu, Nikon?
sigh.
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Oh yeah. I have been using Nikons for well over 20 years. I can’t imagine using anything else. At present I have an F3 and an FM. I used to have an 8008 too but had to sell it to settle some unforseen expenses.
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I tried to sell my old Minolta SLR at a camera exchange. The camera cost me like $600 and they offered $25. Film cameras are kaput.
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