Forum Übersicht - Shutterbug-Classic Camera-Artikel über Minolta CLE

In der Januar 2010-Ausgabe des Shutterbug-Magazins findet sich im Rahmen der Rubrik "Classic Cameras" ein Artikel über die Minolta CLE:

"The Minolta CLE; Precision Engineering From The Japan-Germany Camera Company"
By Jon Sienkiewicz, January, 2010

http://shutterbug.com/equipmentreviews/cla...al/0110minolta/

Der folgende Absatz hat zwar nichts mit der CLE zu tun, erscheint mir jedoch aufgrund der historischen Perspektive erwähnenswert:
ZITATThe camera market was rapidly evolving during the 1970s, and every camera maker was looking for ways to cash in on America's newfound love of 35mm photography. Minolta was the first of the "Big Five" camera manufacturers to shed second-level distributors when they began direct-to-dealer sales in 1969. Canon dumped Bell & Howell shortly thereafter. Eventually, Nikon and EPOI parted ways, Pentax left Honeywell, and Olympus split from Ponder & Best. Eliminating the middlemen meant that the camera makers enjoyed increased profits -- much of which they plowed into advertising and product development. More importantly, direct distribution meant that the camera companies themselves were providing service and technical support, and were in complete control of marketing their brands.

In 1975 Minolta introduced the EG101 -- the world's first photo copier to use the latent image transfer method. That's the year I joined the company, selling SR-T 101s in the Chicago market. A couple of years later the Leica R3 appeared as well as the venerated Minolta XD-11. Both products benefited from the Leica-Minolta connection. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the brand, Minolta Corporation (the U.S.A.-based sales organization) took the entire sales force to Japan in 1978. I was on that trip, and I recall spying a pallet of boxes marked with the Leica logo. I asked about them, of course, and moments later they were covered with an opaque plastic tarpaulin. The point is that Minolta went to great pains to keep their role in Leica camera manufacturing anonymous.

In 1981 the Minolta CLE 35mm rangefinder camera appeared in the US. Although similar in size and configuration to the Leica CL, the CLE is superior in many ways. In addition to offering automatic aperture-priority exposure and TTL off-film-plane metering, it features improved focusing accuracy thanks to a slightly longer rangefinder base.[/quote]