The Minox Submini...

There are reams of information available on the Minox subminis, so I won't bother to duplicate it here. What I want to address are the user aspects of these cameras.

Firstly, I own a Minox B. This is the earliest one with a built in meter (selenium cell). The selenium cell can wear out after a while, but mine seems to agree with my Minolta Spot Meter in most situations. I guess I got lucky. The B with the selenium cell is probably the cheapest Minox on the market. The earlier, smaller models are fairly sought after. The newer models are generally more expensive, except the C which is quite a bit bigger than other Minox cameras. You can still get a Minox brand new, but it is very expensive ($1000+).

The nice thing about the Minox is that it is the smallest useful camera I have run across. The negatives are small (8x10mm) but the Camplan lens is perhaps the sharpest put into any mass produced camera. Assuming that one loads the Minox with fine grained film, this should not be a major problem even up to 8x10 inches. I often shoot 400 speed film and just cope with the grain, though, as the f/3.5 lens can sometimes be limiting indoors or in low light conditions.

One wish of mine is that I could buy a digital camera that is every bit as small as the Minox, and has real manual controls. It wouldn't need a screen or anything - perhaps an Epson R-D1 style count down needle that lets you know how much space you have left on the memory card. The smallest useful digital P&S cameras (useful = produces raw files = Leica D-LUX 3, Ricoh GX300 / GR-D) have a total volume of about 150,000 square millimeters. The Minox B (not the smallest Minox!) has a volume of about 40,000 square millimeters, or just about 1/4th the size of the tiniest useful digital cameras made today. And none of the tiny digicams that have RAW ability have manual controls that are very friendly.

I was briefly thinking about buying the GR-D, but decided that I would wait a bit instead. The GX-300 looks better so I am glad I did. I will probably wait a few months to buy it as the price will come down a bit. But for now I am happy with the Minox. As they are really quite inexpensive I would recommend a Minox to anybody looking for the ultimate pocket camera, if you are comfortable using manual controls.