Minolta has produced an impressive multitude of SLR cameras, many of which were examples of pioneering developments of the Minolta engineers. The XG-9, released in 198* is a solid camera providing the essential features making up an universal manual-focus SLR.

The basic features, as offered by most other amateur SLRs are aperture-priority automatic mode or fully manual operation, self timer etc. In addition it is equipped with an exposure correction function (however difficult to use in practice, since it can be turned only after pressing a small button), depth-of-field preview, an on-off switch (no, although this is a very useful feature, it is not obligatory, see e.g. the Yashica FX-D), a battery-check function, and a very nice touch sensor on the shutter release, which switches on the light meter. This works very well in practice. The light meter has a center-weighted integral characteristics and is very precise. A (minor) drawback, to my personal opinion, is that the camera has no AE-lock function.

Altogether the XG-9 is a nice user camera concentrating on the most important features.