The Minolta XE, known as the XE-1 in Europe and the XE-7 in North America, is a manual focus

Manual focus

In the field of photography, a manual focus camera is one in which the operator has to adjust the focus of the lens by hand. Before the advent of autofocus, all cameras had manually adjusted focusing; thus, the term is a retronym....

, 35 mm

135 film

The term 135 was introduced by Kodak in 1934 as a designation for cartridge film wide, specifically for still photography. It quickly grew in popularity, surpassing 120 film by the late 1960s to become the most popular photographic film format...

 single-lens reflex camera

Camera

A camera is a device that records and stores images. These images may be still photographs or moving images such as videos or movies. The term camera comes from the camera obscura , an early mechanism for projecting images...

 produced by Minolta

Minolta

Minolta Co., Ltd. was a Japanese worldwide manufacturer of cameras, camera accessories, photocopiers, fax machines, and laser printers. Minolta was founded in Osaka, Japan, in 1928 as . It is perhaps best known for making the first integrated autofocus 35mm SLR camera system...

 of Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 between 1974 and 1977. It was developed in collaboration with Leica Camera and has many similarities to the Leica R3

Leica R3

The Leica R3 was a 35mm SLR camera by Leica.Leica launched the Leica R3 in 1976. It was the successor of the Leicaflex SL2, and was developed in cooperation with Minolta, together with the Minolta XE bodies....

.

The XE uses a Leitz

Leitz

The Esselte Leitz GmbH & Co KG, also Leitz, is a German manufacturer of office products. The company, which is headquartered in Stuttgart, is owned by Esselte since 1998. Today the brand Leitz is used by Esselte mainly for filing and workspace products....

-Copal

Nidec Copal Corporation

The , or Copal, is a Japanese manufacturer of optical, electronic and mechanical equipment, primarily for the photographic industry. It has been a subsidiary of Nidec Corporation since 1998, and was formerly known as the Copal Corporation...

 electronic, vertically-traveling, metal blade focal plane shutter supporting exposure times of 1/1000 of a second to four seconds. In aperture priority

Aperture priority

Aperture priority, often abbreviated A or Av on a camera mode dial, is a setting on some cameras that allows the user to choose a specific aperture value while the camera selects a shutter speed to match. The camera will ensure proper exposure...

 auto-exposure mode, the shutter speed is varied steplessly; in manual mode, the shutter speeds are selected in whole stop increments. The camera has a very short shutter lag

Shutter lag

In photography, shutter lag is the delay between triggering the shutter and when the photograph is actually recorded. This is a common problem in the photography of fast-moving objects or people in motion...

of about 38ms, among the best for a SLRs regardless of manufacturer.