< Writings


Title: Minolta
Date: August 8, 2026

I inherited a Minolta XG-2 from my father. After being trapped in a metal case for 20 years I finally decided to bring it with me back to Toronto to see if I still could get something nice out of it.

The camera still looks great but nothing is immune to time. The fake leather shrunk, I had to redo all the sealing and I had to get it checked by a professional shop back in Italy.

The problem, or the characteristic should I say, is that it doesn't work well, and I love it. The shutter curtain jams every 3 clicks. The back panel doesn't seal perfectly so, under certain conditions, light leaks in burning the film. Sometimes the built-in photometer gives completely wrong readings. Things that would normally drive me    up a wall actually make me smile, I guess it's because I erroneously expect high failure rates form a film camera.

My dad bought the whole kit so the camera came with a 50mm, a 70mm, several filters and magnifiers. Unlike the camera, the lens didn't age well. They are rusty, dusty, dirty and most importantly mouldy.

One day I had an epiphany. Why don't I mount the Minolta lenses on my A7iii? A 40 bucks adapter did the trick and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.
The old lens on a new body gives the camera an interesting look, it's considerably less bulky (I forgot how compact a 50MM is) and I love the aperture ring and the manual focus.

The big surprise to me is the quality of the photos. At a first glance you can hardly notice the difference between my Tamron 24-70 and my Minolta lens from the 80s.
It really was an eye opener. Photos are generally softer, but it's a pleasant softness, it makes the photos look more "relatable". I guess my Minolta, thanks to the construction quality and the dust, naturally gets rid of that clinical sharpness that I try so hard to get rid of in Lightroom.
Additionally, being a fully manual lens it forces me to take my time and get the shot right, forcing me to be intentional about the photos I take.

## Shooting film

The concept of scarcity gives value to a good. I'm going to say something trivial but a roll of Kodak Gold 200 is 20 bucks, so every photo matters. You get way more intentional when every click has a price tag on it.

Intentionality plays an important role when I take photos.
When shooting, intentionality comes form the scarcity of film.

I thought about ways to auto-induce this scarcity but eventually it never really makes sense. I pondered about a mobile app that only allows 36 clicks a day, that way every photo matters but I immediately realized how silly it is. When you are holding a device that can take 4k photos infinitely, why would you not use it.
It would be like ditching IMAX for VHS for the sake of the vibes.

The limitation of film photography cannot be overcome. When the roll is done the session is over. It's a real physical barrier, not an auto imposed one. Digital photography was an amazing achievement, it enabled professional photographers that during shootings must get the shot to literally spray and pray.
It allows you to shoot infinitely and gives you a higher degree of artistic freedom compared to film photography.

Anyways, the combination of a digital body with a vintage lens is interesting, I'm satisfied about the results that look soft and imperfect. I love the the manuality that forces me to slow down the process and be more intentional. It's a nice middle-ground between digital and analog.

I could replicate the manuality of it by using manual focus on my Tamron, but once again it would be an artificial limit that looks silly to me. To me, the only way to use manual focus is by not having auto focus.








These are a few shots I liked. Managed to travel a bit lately, I'm particularly proud of the first one.

Anyways, when dealing with claude I can't help but feel the lack of intentionality. Sometimes it generates code I just don't care about, it's a shotgun approach to coding. I do routinely struggle to find the will to understand the code being generated, if it doesn't work I can just ask claude to fix it. If I see something I don't like it doesn't matter, I don't have to deal with it, claude does.

I've been forcing myself to find the intentionality again. I deal with the major data structures and architecture of the project, claude deals with the details. It's a sniper approach. Claude takes care of implementing single methods with a clear input and output.

It's an artificial limitation I'm self-imposing but I believe it's a good one.