DON’T BE FOOLED: this camera is a good deal, but it isn’t a real Minolta

On the surface, this is a pretty good Black Friday camera deal. And in fairness, it’s still a pretty good deal if you look beneath the surface – though it becomes clear that you may not be buying what you expect.

The Minolta MN26Z is just $239.99 – a pretty great price for a 26x optical zoom bridge camera that shoots RAW. I just want to make you aware that this isn’t a real Minolta camera.

The Minolta MN26Z is quite a capable bridge camera. It has a 24-624mm equivalent zoom, it shoots RAW and JPEG images, it has pretty decent 20MP resolution, and it even comes with a 32GB memory card and 4 AA batteries in the box. And by all accounts it takes pretty dang good photos, though the autofocus is too slow to photograph moving subjects like animals and kids.

So, why do I have such a bee in my bonnet about the name? Well, back in the day, Minolta was one of the biggest brands in the camera business. Its name is iconic and, to those of a certain age, it’s synonymous with premium imaging devices.

This Minolta, however, has nothing to do with that Minolta. Sony bought Minolta’s camera assets in 2006, when the company shut down its imaging division. Since 2017 the Minolta name has been used by a company called Elite Brands, which slaps it on generic cameras made by the likes of Ordro in Taiwan.

The same is true of Kodak, of course, which is just a name slapped on generic cameras by a company called JK Imaging. The practice isn’t wrong or even bad, you just need to know that these companies are trading off the good name of a brand that has nothing to do with the actual product.

Take a look at the best bridge cameras from manufacturers like Sony and Canon.