Awhile back, I posted about the Petri 7S, one of two cameras my mother-in-law had passed along to me. This post is on the other camera, a Minolta SR-T-101. This Minolta is an SLR that first appeared on the market in 1966 and continued to be manufactured until 1975. From this website you can figure out more specifically when yours was made. Unfortunately, as I write this post, my camera is unavailable to examine in detail, so your guess is as good as mine!
These cameras appear to have either been pretty popular, as I often see them sitting on the shelf in old camera shops. I tend to over-rely on the light meters on cameras of this era, which is a mistake because they tend to wear out at unpredictable rates. So the pictures I took tend to be grainy and a bit underexposed.
And no, we’re not back in India. These are photos I developed and scanned before we left, and they have been sitting on my hard drive. The camera is half a century old, so what’s a few extra months for these photos?
This is my favorite photo in the bunch! A bicycle in front of a wall in India always makes for a good photo. On this particular day, we were walking around southern Chennai, up and down a hill near the city’s airport. In fact, I was carrying both of the cameras my mother-in-law had given me – the Petri with color film, and the Minolta with black-and-white. In some of the spots, I snapped a photo with both cameras:
I also like how the photo below turned out, taken in the interior courtyard of a Hindu temple. Often such temples will be built around a particularly large tree, and different idols and artifacts will be left at the base of such trees.
The camera also did pretty well with moving scenes and street action, although, like all of the shots, everything was pretty grainy. I like the grainy look and tend to use a less expensive film when I’m testing out these older cameras, but some of the photos were TOO grainy. 
Finally, a few photos from Chennai’s highest point, overlooking the city from the south. It’s a fun camera to use and I’ll definitely be trying it again once I’m reunited with all of my stuff – but it’s important to overcompensate for the aging light meter – and without a flash, it’s best to work with well-lit scenes.
