35mm rangefinder camera from Minolta. This one is from about 1963. Neat little camera – a bit small for my hands so it’s hard to reach the lens to focus comfortably. The rangefinder focuses well but doesn’t snap out at you although the view is bright. No film test for this one. The shutter fires and the speeds appear to be on time – the rear lens element is “ate up” (Southern term) with fungus and when I got rid of the fungus I was left with an etched lens. Maybe some polishing might bring it back. The light meter appears to be accurate too.

It’s a pretty little thing. I like the gray leatherette body and it certainly looks nice under my studio lights. We like to collect complete sets when we can and this one has its original box, leather case (black), silica-gel pack and the owners manual. It would have been extra nice had Minolta made the case gray like the camera.

Although the box has some damage from handling it over the years, it’s still quite solid. It was covered with soot, dirt, dust, grime and I’m sure some DNA – it was so dirty that the Minolta logo was not visible! I used a new bar of ‘Mr. Clean Magic Eraser’ lightly made wet to gently ‘erase’ the dirt. It’s amazing how well it did without damaging the delicate 50+ year old paper. A new way to restore some of our older boxes in our collection.

Nice image from inside the owners booklet.

We wish we had a chance to run a roll through it to test the f2.8 45mm Rokkor lens… but as is typical with these vintage rangefinders, the rear lens element is trashed with fungus.

Thanks for your visit. We hope you know a bit more about this unique camera.

Chris and Carol Photography ^.^