Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D in Walthamstow Marshes – Unleashing the CCD Kraken

With this dark grey miserable harsh winter never ending I thought I’d add some colour into my (and your) day by writing about colour and my experience with it. Much has been said about CCD colours from DSLR’s of yore, some of which had the fabled Kodak CCD sensor. Such examples would be the Olympus E-1, The Pentax 645D and the Leica M9. I had been reading about all of this and I had the urge to shoot with my DSLR – a Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D which has a CCD sensor, which I can’t seem to find any information on. I think Sony may have manufactured this, or it may have been Konica Minolta – I’ve no idea, yet it’s not a Kodak sensor.

I wanted to try and find something with a lot of colour – something which would be great to crank up in ancient Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 which I have (the only one which will work on my 2012 Macintosh Pro Tower).

I read a lot about this camera and many people suggest the colour is the most pleasing they’ve ever come across on a Digital Camera. Now some say “Film like” but I can attest to the fact that it’s nothing like Film. In RAW one can try and mimic Film stock but straight out of camera it’s obviously a Digital Sensor image – albeit one with the look and characteristics of a sensor from the 00s.

But such things must be subjective as people with Leica M9’s and Olympus E1, E500, E400, E300 say their cameras produce the best! Some such as Ken Rockwell say Nikon or Canon. Anyway you get my point. I wanted colour; lots of deep, vibrant, saturated, cranked up, popping in yer face colour!

My Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D (I have one labelled as Maxxum) is long in the tooth, but I love using it – the look and feel is perfect, it has a large bright VF and just feels great to shoot with and I shoot with it whenever I get the opportunity to shoot.

I wrote an article about it previously here on 35mmc (unfortunately soon afterwards the site went down and all comments were lost/deleted – so feel free to take a look and comment)

It was late Spring in 2022 and my last and final Spring in Walthamstow. I was born in Clapton but have lived nearly all of my life in Walthamstow. The weather was fine and I decided to take my boy for company to Walthamstow Marshes, an area of marshland and haunt for bird watchers (and doggers!) around the River Lea which rises from it’s source in Leagrave in Bedfordshire and flows South and a little East until it merges with the River Thames at Trinity Buoy Wharf in Poplar in the East End of London.

The River Lea is important as it forms the ancient boundary between Middlesex and Essex – it also divides Walthamstow from Clapton (in Hackney) and I have been traipsing round it (on foot and bike, alone and with friends, girlfriends and the odd fling) since I was a boy of 10. I know it like the back of my hand, though it has changed drastically in the last 20 years. The influx of Hipsters and Yuppies into Hackney and then into Walthamstow has tamed it, it’s no longer the rough and adventurous unknown I used to explore – the crisscrossing Railway lines and the hidden nooks where you’d find burnt out cars, the Canals and waterways and ponds and little copses – all tamed now – with neat sign posts, walkways, paths, ice cream parlours and cafe bars. But hidden within you’ll still find the odd secret spot and some parts still retain the whiff of nostalgia and childhood memories as they stay relatively unchanged.

It seemed fitting that as I was born in Clapton yet am a Walthamstow boy, I should bid adieu to my home by taking my boy to where I used to roam when his age 40 years and more ago. Then I could part company – and I doubt I shall ever return as my dad had just died the previous December and my Mother, now widowed, was selling the house (she has sold it and moved away). It was also the place where back in 2004/5 (I forget) I took along my first DSLR – A Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D to Photograph boats along the river.

So it was a sad melancholic feeling I had as I armed myself with the Maxxum 7D, the Minolta 50mm f1.4 and the Helios 44-2 M42 lens I love using, then walked from Blackhorse Road down Coppermill Lane, by the old Coppermill Library (long gone) past the turning leading to St. James’s Park then past the old Copper Mill itself, houses and the Waterworks – where I used to do a paper round on freezing cold winter mornings when at school. Under the railway arch of the Chingford to Liverpool Street Branch (which I’d take when travelling to school in Wood Street – 1984-87) then into the Marshes proper.
It was gorgeous day, my son didn’t understand what I felt, he had his football and was kicking it around. I stood on the other side of the Coppermill Fields and watched a Train go past, before I decided to cross the field and make my way under a subway where I knew there was a lot of graffiti I could consider photographing.

There was a lot of graffiti – not the mix of raw fantastic 80ies street art combined with offensive racist stuff I used to find – but tame Hipster graffiti by hip kids and adults. Some of it is nice, very “Brick Lane” type of stuff and nothing which is really organic. But interesting compositions and excellent for photographing especially when one wants to unleash the colour of the CCD Kraken!

There were also pretty murals in the subway, of animals and birds one can come across in the marshes – making really nice subjects.

I shot with both lenses, using combination of small and larger apertures. Anything which would give me good contrast and remotely interesting. I also took some very memorable portraits of my boy which my wife really liked.

After 15 minutes or so he was getting bored so we took a walk up to the River Lea where I stood on the small bridge dividing the two Towns, and watched the Barges and Boats moored along the banks,at families feeding the swans and ducks, then South towards the Olympic Stadium which is hidden beyond a bend in the River, North to the Rowing Club and towards Tottenham – parts which are relatively unchanged. With a last goodbye we back to Coppermill Fields by the car park to play football.

Getting back to the ‘Lab’ – the CF Card stayed in the camera for a while – a long while, until much later when at my new abode in Wivenhoe on the River Colne (I’ve since left that and moved further out into the Country on the Suffolk Essex border by the Stour Estuary) I uploaded the Files onto LR5 and was very pleased with the colour and the look. It wasn’t “Film like” in any way shape or form, but there was so much colour latitude to play with I was able to crank up the hues to technicolor levels! Amazing what LR5 can do with a 20 year old camera’s files!

I’ve been playing with RAW files on almost every Digital Camera with RAW capture I’ve had/used – ranging from Olympus OMD EM-5ii Fujifilm XE2s to Canon 750D Sony A900 and Panasonic Lumix GX7 and I must admit I have been generally more pleased with the range of colour I got from this than any other – bar the Yellows and the type of Red I prefer. The colours aren’t as popping as I’d want but they’re saturated and ‘natural’. I’m prefer Agfa Ultra pop! The Best Yellow’s I’ve had have been from, ironically, a Kodak compact camera! The Best block primary colours I had were also from the Kodak and an OLympus XZ-1. But generally this was great to experiment with and to work on afterwards. Unlike some cameras I’ve used before (Fuji X100) the Reds for example don’t blow – nor have the other colour’s turned to gunk or a mess – they’ve retained the colour but have managed to pop without bursting.

I’d be interested to know from readers which CCD camera’s they’ve tried and which they think give the most pleasing colours, and whether the Kodak CCD’s really pop as legend has it.

Now tweaking them again I am very very pleased; my goal to shoot colourful things and then get some popping in yer face colours seems to have worked, to a certain extent, though what it has done is whet my appetite again. I’ve been playing with old decrepit Digicams and now on the lookout for an old Pentax K10D and an Olympus E1 DSLR which has the fabled Kodak sensor so watch this space, for when Spring is here I’ll go out and shoot stuff with lots of primary colours – get an overdose of it to wash away the grey misery of the long harsh dark winter.

Going over these photographs again makes me sad, I doubt I’ll ever see my old home again and I doubt I’ll visit those old haunts, but thankfully I have some memories.

All photos Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D / Dynax 7D / Alpha 7D
Minolta 50mm f1.4 Helios 44-2 f2 @ ISO 100.
Edited on Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 on a Macintosh
Walthamstow Marshes London E17

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