Minolta are a long gone, but much loved camera manufacturer that made excellent 35mm SLR cameras. That heritage lived on with the Sony Alpha DSLR's, but a Minolta camera from 1963 caught my attention recently and I had to give it a try. Minolta were also a player in the rangefinder camera market. I recently came into posession of a Minolta Hi-Matic 7 rangefinder made in the 1960's and rather than it being a small compact camera, it's a beast!
Given the state of the technology back in the 1960's, electronics were big and most definitely not the small digital circuits of today. We are talking light sensors and metering circuits that all had to fit in a box small enough to hold in your hand, but not so big you couldn't carry the weight. It was a time when the space race was in full flow and Minolta, courtesy of the badge engineered Ansco Autoset version of the Minolta Hi-Matic, had been to orbit with John Glenn in 1962. The follow up to the Hi-Matic was the Minolta Hi-Matic 7 released in 1963 and it is a masterpiece of its day.
The camera market in the late 50's - early 60's was still divided between Rangefinder, Twin Lens Reflex, Graflex Press and the new kid on the block, the Single Lens Reflex camera that came to dominate the market. Minolta was a player with cameras in all sections of the market and this camera was their big play for the affordable rangefinder that you or I could produce professional standard photos with. It had a couple of things going for it that made that kind of quality available to us.
The original Hi-Matic had a selenium cell light meter that took advantage of the ability of selenium to create an electric voltage based on the amount of light it is exposed to. It was a big meter and covered a fair amount of real estate on the camera. For the Hi-Matic 7 Minolta switched to a smaller Cadmium Sulphide (Cds) based meter that needs a battery for it to work.
At the time the most widely available battery was a Mercury Oxide based battery and was before Joe Public knew just how toxic mercury is. Thankfully the electrical circuits inside the Hi-Matic 7 can work using a standard LR/SR 44 when placed in an adapter that you can pick up for pennies from the bay. The other alternative is the Wein Cell 625 that is the right size for the battery holder.
The Cds cell light meter doesn't suffer the degradation over time that selenium suffers from and allows the camera to have a fully automatic exposure system that is as good today as when the camera was new 60 years ago. You can also use the camera in full manual without a battery if you wish. The lens on the Minolta Hi-Matic 7 is a Rokkor 45mm f/1.8 and is a real gem. Combined with state of the art metering of the time, boy does it shine when you get your exposures right.
I can see why my mate Steve regretted selling his all those years ago. I really enjoyed using the camera, the shutter is so quiet I had to keep checking I had actually taken a photo. It wont fire again until you wind the film on. The Cds light meter is always on, but putting the lens cap on stops it drawing power from the battery, something to remember for future reference. The rangefinder patch is nice and bright, but don't worry if you get a dull one, they can be cleaned and brought back to spec by your favourite camera technician.
I shot a roll of Ilford HP5+ 400 at its box speed of 400 iso during a visit to Kirkby Lonsdale with my friend Keith and was really keen to see how it fared. We had a lot of fun in Kirkby Lonsdale and both shot three films with a part roll left in a camera to finish on another day. As I mentioned in a previous blog about our visit, it's not a big town, you can easily get round it in half an hour, but with several rolls of film to get through, we spent a few hours there and we will return at some point.
I developed my roll of Ilford HP5+ 400 a couple of days later in HC110 1+47 dilution E for 8 minutes at 20 celcius and soon had it hanging to dry. Digitising was done with my Nikon D700, Tamron Adaptall 2 90mm f/2.5 macro lens, Valoi 35mm film holder on my Pixl-latr and A5 size led light pad. I processed the RAW files with Affinity Photo 2.
Here's a few favourites from my first experience of using the Minolta Hi-Matic 7. This may be a big camera, weighing in at 1.5 pounds, but it was well worth the effort carrying it around for a couple of hours. I am very impressed with the photos I was able to produce with it and can definitely recommend it to anyone who has a penchant for big cameras with big performance to match. As always I have placed them and more in an album on Flickr you can visit using the link below. I hope you enjoy them.
Minolta Hi-Matic 7 - Ilford HP5+ 400
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