Reviewed by Randy Shafer (Heavysteam@aol.com)

As entranced as I am with my trusty Elph IXUS pocket cameras, I recently began to get a hankering for an APS single lens reflex.   Point and shoot cameras are great for making snapshots, but really suffer from things like parallax error when you try to do close-ups, and you never really know what you have shot until you get the prints back.   With an SLR, though, you see what is going to go on the film when you press the button and it gives you
much more control over the final product.

I reviewed the various products on the market and settled on the Minolta Vectis S-1.   I was impressed with the lightweight, splash-proof design and the fact that the camera would operate in all the modes that my regular SLR's will -- from full automatic, though shutter or aperture preferred modes, down to plain old manual.

The Nikon and Canon entries were impressive, but the prices were too.  With Minolta offering aggressive rebates on the S-1 system, I was able to purchase the body, the 25-150mm zoom, and the 80-240mm APO zoom for less than $700.  The lenses come with hoods, and the entire system fits in a small camcorder bag.   It's certainly not a pocket camera, but it hangs lightly on my neck, which is much appreciated after a day of lugging around a Nikon F5.

The camera has all the familiar modern SLR exposure modes, including various automatic program modes, aperture preferred, shutter preferred and manual.  It also claims to use TTL flash and fill flash.  When comparing the camera's metering system against a professional Sekonic exposure meter, I found the Vectis matrix metering system did a good overall job on setting exposures -- Certainly good enough to get consistent results given APS features like PQI.

As the flagship of Minolta's APS line, the Vectis S-1 is a system with a range of zoom lenses, a single prime lens with macro, and accessory flash.  In addition, the camera will work with Minolta's amazing remote-firing flashes, which helps establish the Vectis S-1 as a peer to Minolta 35mm SLR's, rather than a poor cousin.

I found my Minolta lenses to give good results.  The 80-240mm APO lens is a good performer, and it should be as it is Minolta's highest-priced Vectis lens.  I found the camera's light weight to work against this lens at longer focal lengths, though, and found that I needed to use my monopod to help steady the camera when zoomed past 180mm or so.

Autofocus operation is on a par with other SLR's I have used.    I think the autofocus operation in professional SLR systems like Nikon and Canon are noticeably better, but at a big price, of course.  I did sometimes notice the camera would switch to focus tracking mode when using the APO lens, which I attribute to my shaky old hands.

The S-1 has all the APS bells and whistles, including full information exchange and PQI, mid roll change and FTPM.  The controls are a little daffy as with most modern SLR's, with lots of button pushing and trips to the manual.   Suffice it to say that the same guys who design VCR's design these things.  Fortunately, the controls you use 99% of the time to shoot pictures with the Vectis S-1 are easily at hand, intuitive and reliable.

My overall assessment of the Vectis S-1 is that is a great camera for a person who wants to buy a basic system and doesn't need to expand into exotic arenas later.   (That's a job for a "super system" camera like the Nikon Pronea.)   The glass is quality, and the camera is a pleasure to carry.    The APS features help to give a high yield of good prints, and advanced features like mid-roll change are present.    It is a system that can be entered with a starter set at a low price, yet has some excellent lenses that can be added later.    Above all, it has the advantages of an SLR that can't be matched by viewfinder cameras.