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A WELL TRAVELED MINOLTA

Dynax 500si

I had my first Dynax 500si brand new in 1998, it was the all silver version. Unfortunately I had to part with about a year later but not before we had traveled the world together.

By a stroke of good fortune I was chatting with a friend a few years ago who said he had obtained a Dynax 500si but wasn't happy with it, he's a devout Pentax man. To cut a long story short it was coming up for Christmas and I came home one evening to find a package waiting for me on my doorstep from the aforementioned friend. Inside was, you've guessed it, the Dynax. I was over the moon, once again me and my Dynax could go off in search of the world and this we did although on a smaller scale, only across the channel into Europe.

This article contains images from both of my Dynax 500si. The original only had the standard 35 - 80 kit lens. The current model has a Sigma 28 - 80 and a Cosina 70 - 210.

The first trip abroad with Dynax #1 was to Poland. I was sent out to work on a project in Warsaw but also had to visit our factory in Bydgoszcz. This was the view from my hotel window there on a miserable wet day. I was only there for 2 days and it rained almost constantly. Having said, the weather wasn't any better when we got back to Warsaw.

Sadly these images from Poland are not great because the film wasn't particularly good and the negatives haven't aged well. This, added to the scanning, has resulted in some quite mediocre pictures.

Better conditions Time to test the Minolta in some of the hottest and brightest conditions in the world. I was sent out to Saudi Arabia for a while and although free time was short I did manage to get out to the ancient city of Diriyah.

For my final trip with the original camera I spent some time in Argentina. This was my longest trip abroad and involved quite a few excursions, including a trip up through Los Andes from Mendoza city to the Chilean border. Interestingly we met up with a German tourist who had one of the then latest hi tech digital cameras which refused to work so we took pictures for him with the trusty Minolta and presented him with them.



	And finally we travel through the time warp and leap forward about 7 years to the "new" Dynax 500si, which you see at the top. This has accompanied me on a few trips into France and Belgium. Some of the images from these trips are already on the site page so these are some more which are not.