I am confused a bit by our 1500 review. if the guts of the camera's optics are in the lens unit, I assume the battery, etc are in the "body." Then why is it a problem to open the battery case to change cards? Can't the lenms unit be mounted or was Minolta stipi and put the screw in the part of the camera that does not need to be on the tripod?

-- Steve Schwartz (steves@u.washington.edu), December 27, 1998

Answers

I checked my shots of the unit and indeed, the tripod socket is on the body of the camera, not the lens unit. (My guess is they didn't want to hang all the weight of the batteries, etc off the lens unit and the hook/latch that attaches it to the main body.) I think the optional remote cable for the lens/CCD head has a tripod socket on it, but I didn't think to take a photo of that. If so, this would work, but you'll need to buy the optional extension cable for the lens head to do so.

-- Dave Etchells (web@imaging-resource.com), December 27, 1998.