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Minolta Hi-Matic
7s |
The heart of the camera is the lens, a big, pretty fast and tack sharp Rokkor-PF 45mm f1.8. I've owned and used some Minolta Rokkor prime lenses and my experience is they are first line, this one is not an exception. The lens barrel has almost everything you need to control the camera, focus, shutter speed and f stop rings, self timer lever and also the film ISO selector are all built around it, as btw it happens with almost all the fixed lens RFs from the 60s-70s.
Designed before the 'let's do them smaller!' syndrome that lead to the totemic Canonet G-III QL17, the great Hi-matic 7sII and some other compact versions of their great predecessors, the 7s is a pretty big and heavy camera, but don't let the appearances fool you, it's every bit as capable as the late compact wonders. Near the front of the lens barrel you'll find both shutter speed and aperture rings. They are adjacent to each other, and that makes that sometimes you turn both when you only want to move one of them. That happens mainly when moving the speed one, which is about half as thick as the f stop one and hence difficult to grab properly sometimes. What works better for me is to grab both to give more grip while selecting speed, and then once it's fixed, turn the bigger easier to move f stop one to the desired value.. The camera gives exposure values in EV numbers, a feature that was in fashion back then and which can be found in some other cameras as well (my Rollei does the same), and there's a small window on the aperture ring indicating always the selected exposure in EV. If you're familiar with that scale, you'll find it useful. That's exactly the same way the meter readings are shown in the finder, that way you could easily translate the finder reading into a shutter/aperture setting by directly looking at the EV window. As the meter on my unit doesn't work and in fact I almost always end metering by the sunny-16 rule or with a hand held meter, that's not of too much importance.
The finder has also coupled parallax corrected bright lines, meaning that they move while focusing to compensate for parallax error at different focus distances. The finder is big and bright, but may present some internal fogging due to its age, which can be cleaned easily if you're a bit handy. On the right side of the finder you'll find the EV metering scale and needle. By turning both exposure rings to the the A position, you change to automatic mode. When both rings are in that setting, the camera gets locked into fully programmed auto mode, selecting both shutter and aperture according to the meter readings. Before you must, however, remember to turn the meter on ! That's done by simply moving the ASA lever to its appropriated value, and obviously out of the OFF setting, where you can put it to save battery life. I can't speak of reliability of this system myself, but according to some people I've talked with, it gets the job done pretty well. However, remember this is pre-electronic boom age, and most things inside the camera were still done mechanically. To unlock the Auto mode, you must push a small unmarked chrome lid on the left side of the barrel. You'll easily know as when it gets locked, the lid comes out with a click. Curiously, it uses exactly the same metering system as my Minolta SRT, the now worldwide known (to Minolta fans, that is) CLC system, which stands for Contrast-Light-Compensation, supposed to offer accurate readings for even very contrasty scenes. I've used the built-in meter on my SRT and found it to give good results, even with slide film, so I can't think of any reason why it should be different with the Hi-matic. A couple of tips and tricks, the advance lever has a never ending 220º (!) throw, but fortunately it's ratcheted, which means you can divide the throw in 2 or 3 shorter strokes. Also, only after realizing the rewind crank didn't come up, I remembered the back opens by pulling up a small lid on the viewfinder side of the body, near the strap lug. Also, the Hi-matic includes another worldwide fan-known feature, a SLS (Safe Loading Signal) indicator. That's simply a small transparent window placed under the wind lever where a small red arrow advances when film is properly loaded and advancing correctly. The rewind knob turning will tell you the same, but it's nonetheless a useful feature and a nice detail to include, as is the dual marked feet/meters distance scale on the focus ring.
Overall, and now that I have it here with me, that simple, straight-shaped but nonetheless elegant design has something really attractive in it. As most people prefers the compactness of the later models, sometimes these ones can be found dirt cheap, even though there seems to be some sort of rangefinder renaissance which is placing these cameras above their usual price out there. I have a special place in my camera-geek heart for my first Minolta cameras, but this one has also found its way to it. If you give the 7s a chance, maybe it will find also its way to yours.
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Last update: November 2004
