Your reading comprehension is kind of poor skieur. I listed the "best": camera a manufacturer can make, ie, its flagship, as being what I consider a "pro" camera. Minolta is a dead company,defunct company. the leica flex line of cameras never was very complete, nor very well-accepted,and has been killed off, also dead. The "Contax" was a Kyocera/Yashica resurrection of a famous German brand, with imitation "Zeiss" lenses...once again, lots of "sizzle" but very,very,very little "sizzzle".
You listed The Minolta XK as " best technology, construction, reliability and ruggedness in its time and it was "flagship-level". It even had interchangeable focus screens."
--Funny thing though, I have never seen a SINGLE ONE in actual use--not one, single Minolta XK, and I hung out with aspiring photojournalists and art photography students...Nikon was #1, Canon was #2, and Olympus was #3,with the OM-1 system. As far as the "best technology", the XK is a laughable camera of choice--the Olympus OM series and had TTL flash before Minolta did. Minolta's XK line was a statement camera, but it was an abject failure. It was Minolta's pro camera, for sure. And yet, I never, EVER have seen a single one in actual use...not in 35+ years...As far as the Minolkta XK having the best ruggedness an reliability...pretty much theoretical, in that pretty much zero pros ever proved they were rugged cameras...their toughest assignments were found on the pages of Popular Photography magazine, in the Minolta advertisement ad copy.
Minolta's XD-11???? Are you serious??? Canon's A-1 multi-mode was more-advanced. Pentax's Super Program was equally advanced. The Canon however, was a poor seller,and despite its tremendous advances in design, always sold poorly, and was discontinued after small numbers were made. Pentax's LX was MORE-advanced and better made than anything MInolta ever made, and YET, it too was a total,total FLOP. I have only seen ONE, in over 30 years of shooting. ONE LX, in the real world...Nikon F bodies? HUNDREDS. Canon bodies? HUNDREDS.
You forgot the Leica R4 and M series rangefinders that fit that definition as well. The Contax RTS with Zeiss lenses was also a pro camera.
No I did not "forget them"....I mentioned a manufacturer's best possible camera as being their "flagship"...I think your long-term love for Minolta/Sony is showing here...the Leica held sway for a long time as a small 35mm camera, but as soon as the Nikon system came into being, Leica found itself outmoded within a decade. The Leica rangefinder is a good camera with about four lens lengths, but the framing is poor for lenses longer than about 90mm...nearly useless for longer lenses like 135 to 300...Leica R-series...stepchildren of the Leica family, not well-liked by many, discontinued about four years ago...no sales...no user base...outmoded design...Contax RTS with YASHICA-made (Kyocera 'Zeiss') lenses....yeah, I owned one in 1980-81...it was a very poorly-conceived system.
Even your view of high end amateur cameras over past decades is biased toward Nikon. The Minolta XD11 was one of the best designed and robust cameras of its time too. I used 2 of them continually and professionally at one point, even more than the Nikons that I also had at my disposal. They were great cameras for journalistic and public relations action shooting.
**Hilarious...Let's see...Minolta as a camera maker--DEAD. Out of business. Contax as a camera brand--DEAD....discontinued. Leicaflex as a camera brand--DEAD...discontinued. Olympus as a camera brand--currently, as of yesterdaym, being raided by the Japanese federal government for financial misdealings extending back to the 1980's, and pretty much one of the worst camera makers in terms of offerings. Pentax as a camera makwer--hmmm....passed over by HOYA, and now sold to Ricoh....Miranda as a camera maker--dead. Petri-dead. Mamiya/Sekor as a 35mm camera maker--DEADR. Rolleiflex as a 35mm camera maker=DEAD. As I said, Nikon and CANON, THRIVING....My "bias" is toward cameras that actually made it out of the showrooms and the magazines...Minolta fell on its face multiple times and never could gain acceptance as a pro camera...the brand is DEAD.
Whose bias are we talking about here, really??? Is Elvis still alive???
Sony professional cameras...blah,blah,blah...
skieur
Dead companies was NOT included in your original definition of a pro camera and it certainly has NOTHING to do with either the quality of the camera or the quality of the image produced.
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