Konica Minolta today has announced their intention to stop the manufacture of film and digital cameras, as well colour film and paper, by March 31, 2006. [Rob Galbraith DPI]

Probably inevitable, given the difficulties of transitioning to a filmless, digital world; Minolta’s initially smaller market share; and the head start of Canon (huge) and Nikon (pretty big) – but still sad news.

The first decent camera I purchased was the old Minolta SRT-101, a fine camera back in the days of film. Since then – and even quite recently – Minolta came out with some equipment that was arguably better than the competition. Although I don’t own one and, in fact I purchased a competing product a while back, the A2 is a great example. This 8 megapixel digicam is small, has good optics for this type of camera, and included a novel image stabilization system that moved the sensor rather than lens elements. This system made it into their DSLR line, but it was probably too late by then.

(Update: I see in another article that KM sold some assets to Sony for use in SLR cameras. This creates some hope that the good features of the KM cameras may live on in offerings from Sony.)
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