And just what the hell is APS?

[Photo Engineer]

It works well on my scanner when placed in the 35mm holder or laid flat on the glass. Either way.

PE

[nickrapak]

I have a Minolta Vectis S-100 SLR that I got brand new on the cheap. It is smaller than any of my other film SLRs, and still delivers adequate quality for point n' shoot shooting. I have several rolls of various film, ranging from 400 speed C-41 color to 100 speed E-6 film (Yes, it existed). For those people it was aimed at, APS was an ideal system. No dealing with negative strips, point and shoot, and the lab can theoretically scan it easily. However, digital was even more ideal. No negatives, and you get digital files automatically. I look at APS less like Disc film, and more like 828 film: A good concept, but bad timing. I will still use my camera until film is no longer available readily.

[Someonenameddavid]

Well, I guess I'm just confused then. Maybe I confused the Pronea with the Vectis ( which I KNOW did not have a standard Minolta mount), or the Pronea wide-angles were not backwards compatible to the F-mount cameras. Whatever. I think we sold all of two Pronea cameras and maybe a half-dozen Vectis SLRs in the four years I worked at the store. Yes, the capabilities of the system were vastly underutilized.

The Vectis camera was unique in that it was named after the Latin name for the (English) Isle of Wight (cf Beatles "when I'm 64"... every summer we can have a cottage on the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear)... and that was all to commend the system. I wonder if Pronea lenses work on Nikon APS sized sensors
David

[Photo Engineer]

Pronea lenses ARE for Nikon APS lenses and most current digital sensors are APS sized.

Some D70 lenses work on the Pronea, but some Pronea lenses stick too far into the D70 body and bump the mirror. In addition, the contacts on both series are different, and depending on what lens or attachment you use, you do get less functionality.

PE

[Brac]

It's true the Minolta S-1 and S-100 Vectis SLR's will only take lenses with the dedicated Vectis mount. There was also at least one early Minolta digital SLR which also had this mount & took these lenses, plus Minolta made a special wide angle lens for it. I bought my S-100 several years ago at a very low price, at a shop selling discontinued goods (not just photographic). I've been very happy with it as it's not too bulky and the results have been very satisfactory. At one time Kodak did put one of its higher quality emulsions in APS cassettes (an ISO 200 "High Definition" film) and Fuji even did a ISO 800 colour negative film at one point. It's still possible to get the film developed and scanned to CD, which is what I do, but I guess the format's days are numbered. Some years back I was able to buy some VHS cassette sized plastic cases which would store several developed film cassettes and their index pages. I thought that was a very neat idea.

[ilford_king]

I never shot it, but as a former 1-Hour mini-lab tech I can tell you what APS was to us: a new film format that required us to buy about $8K in new equipment for a format that at its peak only accounted for 5% of our business, it required new training, the film tore easily requiring re-cutting the unique patterns required for it to go back into the canister where it was always stored, and we generally detested it because we had to change over the machines to handle it thus bringing 35mm printing to a halt. APS was a lot like 110 format in that we rarely got any, but would always complain when we did.

Having said that it was really just the forerunner to digital in my opinion, it would have lasted longer if digital had not advanced so rapidly. The film had flaws, but the cameras that used the film were generally smaller and sexier than their 35mm counterparts. Unfortunately thanks to digital it became another short lived format like the disc camera.