Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1992/10/06
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I absolutely love the Minolta Hi-Matic 7 and was going to offer to buy yours if you don't want it. I had one for many years, and was able to strip it, clean it, repair it, and reassemble it entirely myself. The photocell is an ordinary CdS cell and I took the liberty of measuring its photo-optical characteristics before it went bad; I was able to buy new ones for about a dollar from Allied Radio in Chicago. But I loaned it to my brother to take on a bicycle trip one year and he dropped it into a river and lost it (merely dropping it into the river, but being retrieved, is something that the Hi-Matic 7 recovers from fairly easily). I recently steered a teenage acquaintance who wanted a "first good camera" to the Canon P. I let him try mine, and he was hooked. It's almost as rugged as a Leica but it has a lot more features. I've seen beat-up Canon P's that are too dented for collectors for sale for as little as $100. I've gotten to be pretty good at stripping a Canon P and refurbishing it and reassembling it and not having any leftover parts. My bread-and-butter "ruggedness" camera is a Leica IIIf equipped with a brightline finder and a collapsible 2.8 Elmar lens. I carry a Minox lightmeter along with it because I find the Leicameter too bulky. There's no substitute for a rangefinder camera for ruggedness and small size.