Eight Minutes Old

After starting with posting a pigeon-shot in the last photo post, I give you another one from Karlsruhe, this time with a number of sitting pigeons on a wall/roof/chimney. How many do you find this time?

By the way: Today ma “new” camera arrived, a Minolta Hi-Matic 7 SII rangefinder with a fixed 40mm f/1.7 Rokkor lens. Their production started in 1977, so it is probably older than me. The camera is much smaller than a SLR I’m used to take photos with, but fits my hand better than the tiny Minox 35 :-).

On the first glace it seems to work fine: The split image focussing works (after I had to clean all windows from dust and fingerprints), film advance is ok and the different apertures open without problems. The exposure mechanism is fully mechanical, working even without a battery and making a nice, buzzing sound, but the leaf shutter is essentially silent, especially when compared to a SLR (So you don’t need a Leica to be discrete). I even got the light meter back to life, using a 675 zinc-air hearing aid battery. The original PX675 mercury cells don’t exist anymore due to the environmental and health problems they caused. There are several possible alternatives, but the voltage of the 675 hearing aid cells (1.4V) fits best with the original 1.35 Volts. that’s of some importance because the metering will give differing exposure times when the wrong voltage is supplied, what would result in under- or over-exposure of the negatives.

Currently, I am only worrying whether the light seals are still intact. I will test this (and the correct exposure/metering) with a test film. Hope to get it developed till next week.

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