Let's get started with the least obvious feature of the Minolta Freedom Escort, the function of the green light in the viewfinder. A steady green light indicates you're good to go with focus, and it also indicates that the shutter speed or auto-flash is fast enough to give you a sharp picture. A steady blinking light indicates the shutter speed may be too slow to hand hold or you should turn on the flash. A rapidly blinking green light indicates that you are too close to your subject or the camera cannot find focus.
The Minolta Freedom Escort is a clone of the Leica Mini II. I would have liked testing the Leica Mini II, but the only advantage of the Leica Mini II is that it has B (bulb) setting. Aesthetically, the Leica looks more refined, but I did not want to spend $200 more for those attributes.
The Minolta Freedom Escort has most of the point and shoot features that I like. I can manually control flash, the lens is a four element prime, I can lock the focus, and the shutter speed range is quite broad. It would be a perfect point and shoot for me if it had manual ISO capability instead of just DX.
The first thing I noticed when playing with the camera is that turning the camera on extends the lens, but the sound it makes is a bit annoying and it moves out rather slowly. No big deal, but I'm surprised it was not a smoother "turn on" experience. I decided when I go out shooting I would leave the camera on and set the flash to off because once I turn the camera off and on again the flash defaults to double flash, yuck! Leaving the camera to the on position will hardly drain the batteries and it is not too different from pulling out the lens on a Rollei 35 so that it's always ready to go.
The Test Roll
On day one with a roll of Fujicolor 200 24 exposure film loaded in the camera we decided to walk one of the trails in The Presidio. Photos are from that walk. One thing I learned about the camera is that it shuts off automatically after about five minutes and the lens retracts. So my idea about leaving the camera on and always ready like a Rollei 35 did not pan out. I just had to remember to set the camera back to my preferred "flash-off" setting every time I turned on the camera. The image of the toyon berries was shot with forced flash, all others were flash off.
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| Frame #1 was to see how accurate the auto focus is on close subjects. The subject is sharp and the background is blurry - as it should be. |
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| No flash |
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| With flash |
The following day photos are from a walk in Noe Valley, a photogenic neighborhood in San Francisco. I became more comfortable with the camera on day two. The rhythm and sound of the focus and shutter experience felt better than day one with the camera. Although I later realized that I messed up one shot and did not take the photo because I thought the flashing light was for out of focus range, but it was the steady light for low light, not the rapid flashing light.
For whatever reason the instruction sheet tech detail section does not indicate that the lens is a four element lens. The Minolta Freedom Escort was released in 1991.
Final Thoughts
