your groups of friends at Honeywell must've done their research a very long
time ago, because Minolta is OUT of the DSLR business since last year. Their
cameras are discontinued, their engineers fired, and the DSLR IP was sold to
Sony as far as I can remember. (that was after Minolta was acquired by
Konica ) .The Maxxum 5D was very short lived .

best regards,
matt tudor

Harry James wrote in message ...
OK. A group of my friends at Honeywell did some research and while the
Canon
came out well the Minolta also came out well with most of the same
features and
cheaper by some distance. So, three of them bought Minoltas and they are
very
pleased. One of the group belongs to my club and he and I have shot
everything
from spectra to M57 at prime focus, to planets by projection, timed
exposures of
M13 and several galaxies and my only complaint about the camera is that
like most
dslr's you cannot toggle the camera to a monitor to focus - and find that
a crime!
I guess you have to spend $2k+ to do that (which is nuts in my book). One
of the
guys in Minneapolis passed my complaint on to the Minolta (and Canon) rep
and
the rep replied: "............well..... nobody asks for that features
that's why the
manufacturers dont include it ... who would want that!?"

Take a look at the Minoltas and see what you think.

jw

Tim Killian wrote:

I'm planning to purchase a DSLR for astro imaging. What's the word on
new products from Canon in the next three-six months?

TIA