Minolta SB-70 (S) (1986)

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The Minolta SB-70 was first shown as a prototype at the Photokina 1986. A market-ready product was manufactured by November of 1987 and sale started in Japan in 1988. It was built along with the Maxxum 7000 35mm camera. Meaning that Minolta designers already had the still video back in mind when they designed the Maxxum. The back had a 2/3" CCD and a video floppy disk drive built in. The initial production was set at 500 units per month. How many actually were sold is uncertain. To use the back, the regular back of the Maxxum had to be removed, the still video camera back had to be attached. Also, the mirror had to be taken out of the camera and placed in a spare box for safekeeping. So the light would directly fall onto the CCD. The result was that the depth was multiplied by factor 4. An attached 50mm lens would therefore turn into a 200mm lens.

Minolta also introduced an extremely rare and hard to find still video recorder MS-R 1000 (S) and a still video printer MS-P 1000 (S) along with the two still video backs. The recorder was a necessary item in order to view and erase images taken with the SV backs. The still video recorder is among one of the rarest ever marketed.

The Still Video Back was called "SB-70" in Japan and "SB-70S" in the US, this also counts for the recorder and printer.