I’ve written another camera review over here at 35mmc. It’s my take on the Leica C2 Zoom, a bit off an odd duck point & shoot camera from the early 1990s.
It’s a fun read, I’ve been told. I hope you agree.
Tag: 35mm
Review on 35mmc – Minolta Hi-Matic AF-2
Another review of mine is up on Hamish Gill’s amazing 35mm compact shooter site, the no-nonsensically titled 35mmc.com. The star: a $9.99 Hi-Matic camera.
I Reviewed the Minolta Riva Mini
The Act of Cleaning
Cleaning is how we take ownership of things.
I noticed this when I received a beaten up Nikon F801 camera, won on eBay (or “that auction site” as it is so often referred to when people want to avoid brands; making clear that our internet auction needs are pretty much monotheistic) for €11,05 plus shipping. This worked out, all in all to €15,45 and even though the camera’s condition was untested and it was dusty and grimy, I considered it a good deal. The F801 was a semi professional camera when released in 1988, and probably cost more than I’d ever consider spending on a digital SLR these days. The camera was packaged with an extra back, the MF-21 multi function control back, to enable you to print dates and aperture and shutter speed on film, to time photos at intervals, or to “trigger trap” wildlife walking into focus. This seemed to me like a less sophisticated version of a police speed camera. Who knows how many cool wildlife shots that we commend the intrepid photographer for were taken with methods like this, on a tripod abandoned in the woods, just waiting for something, anything to walk into frame.
But I digress. The act of cleaning is the act of making one’s own. After unpacking and unwrapping the camera body, I first rubbed it off with a paper towel, getting most of the obvious dust. Then I put a cup of water, a cup of benzene, a small air dust blower, a used old soft tooth brush and q-tips on the table. The table was layered with more paper towels. I took of the camera strap. I rubbed the camera with paper towels and some water until it already looked much better. Its battle scars from a long life of use and a long life of neglect in a cupboard or closet somewhere became more visible than they had been. Little screws holding the machine together had small flecks of rust on their heads. I used q-tips dipped in water to clean these, and to clean the crevices and hard to reach places that the paper towel had not cleaned. I rubbed it off once again with a paper towel. Next, I dipped a q-tip in benzene and took to cleaning the less sensitive parts of the camera. The lens mount’s metal became shiny again, and the autofocusing screw appeared to be turning quicker and more freely after the operation. I blew out the mirror box with the dust blower, and unhooked the little latch that held the view screen to blow dust and dirt off it as well. This worked better than initially expected (I had half feared I would need to uninstall and rinse the whole thing), and only a few tiny flecks remained. The tooth brush was dipped in water, too, to get into even tinier crevices, into the rim around the control wheel. Then I dipped it in benzene as well and cleaned what had not responded to the water.I unscrewed the battery compartment and rubbed the contacts with another naphta-dipped q-tip. They did not look dirty to me, but there was no harm in giving them some extra cleaning. Maybe there was corrosion on them that I simply could not see. I put new batteries in the camera, and it started right up, though it remained wonky: the first shot after not using it for a few hours wouldn’t complete its cycle and the mirror would stay up until I pressed the shutter button again. I replaced the batteries with rechargeables and hoped this would fix it, but it did not. At this point, I do not know what will fix this, if anything will that isn’t prohibitively expensive for such a cheap camera. I added new batteries – 2 lithium CR2025s – to the data back, and it came to life also. Thankfully, it had been designed with foresight, and setting 2015 on the almost thirty year old piece of kit was not a problem. I cleaned the strap with some water and the toothbrush, and then disinfected it. I reattached it to the camera body, added a period 35–70 kit zoom lens, and pointed the camera at the window.
It did fire, at least it did the second, third, fourth, and fifth times. I put in a test film. How will I deal with the shutter problem? This morning I used up all the exposures on the test roll, took it out and proceeded to fire the shutter on high, 3 or so frames per second, for something between 5 and 10 minutes. Maybe this will fix it. Maybe it won’t. Then I will try something else.
Because the act of cleaning had made this my camera now, mine to own, to shoot, but also to maintain and fix. The act of buying it did not make it so, especially not since there was a long interval between clicking “bid” and being informed I’d won the auction and receiving the actual item and unpacking it and looking at it and holding it in my hand. It felt good in my hand. All it needed was a good cleaning.
Rangefinder Impersonators, or: Using Minolta’s Hi-Matic AF2 as an Analogue Fuji X100s
The Fuji X100s, and its predecessor, the X100 before it, have received both accolades and disparagament from many a commentator during the past three years or so. Though the camera is not everything to everyone, it seems that it is one thing: everybody’s favorite digital rangefinder camera that’s not actually a rangefinder.
This is now a camera category. With its digital X-series of retr0-styled – read: designed to look and work the way that most cameras actually looked and worked from the early 20th century until the mid-1980s – cameras, Fuji hit a nerve. It didn’t hurt that its postmodern forays into yesteryear produced more than acceptable digital pictures. Some photographers even seemed to rediscover an analogue soul in the by now bewildering number of digital offerings from a company that still makes, and importantly, still calls itself, Fujifilm.
The Fuji X100/s had the looks and many advantages of a rangefinder complete with close enough simulations of favorite Fuji film stocks, some ironically long discontinued in real life. As the owner of an X100s who began once again taking photos on film a little over a year ago, I wondered: was there an analogue equivalent? And not an expensive Leica M series camera, a somewhat less expensive but still not-cool-if-you-leave-that-on-the-bus C0ntax G, or one of the plethora of fixed lens rangefinders from the 1960s through early 1980s. No, those were fun, but I wanted something for those occasions when the camera I brought would be cheap, competent, and idiot proof.
Was there a camera, conceived at the time with a good fixed lens, 35mm or so field of view, some automation, and built in flash? Something that could be used like an X100S in program mode for unobtrusive pictures of streets, buildings, and most importantly, people? Something, in short, that I could carry everywhere instead of my trusty, but heavy and very very manual Rollei 35T? This is where, by way of an unexpected side entrance, the Minolta Hi-Matic AF2 appears on the scene.
In the late 1970s, the all-metal, mostly manual operation design language of SLR cameras was slowly but surely on its way out. Canon introduced the AE1, which in 1981 gave way to the AE1 Program, and on the heels of those cameras’ successes, Minolta thought it could capture the mass market with something a little cheaper and a little more technically advanced than it’s top of the line XD 7 (a.k.a. XD 11) camera. That something was the Minolta X-700, and it was a design they felt no great rush to update. In fact, it continued to be made well into the 1990s.
The X-700 sold, and it sold well. This would ultimately enable Minolta to throw some of the money earned into research and development for what became the Alpha (a.k.a. Maxxum, a.k.a. Dynax) 7000. The 7000 would set the standard for all autofocusing SLR cameras. Though today it exudes a naive 1980s charm, all the major elements of today’s high tech digital Canons, Sonys, and Nikons are already present in this, their ancestor. The 7000 had autofocusing built into the camera, not the lens (as Canon’s first attempt at the technology did), an LCD display, motorized film transport, and a menu system for settings. It was a technological achievement, and a commercial success.
Before that, however, Minolta had released a point and shoot autofocus camera that showed its old school rangefinder heritage: the Hi-Matic AF. Introduced in 1979, the AF was part of a class of small, semi-automatic cameras from different Japanese manufacturers that looked much the same. Konica’s C35 AF led the way in 1977. It used the simple passive autofocusing system patented by Honeywell. Canon’s AF35M (also in the guises of SureShot and AutoBoy) was not too far behind in November of 1979. Minolta’s entry, still featuring the cursive mid century modern logo that had branded their cameras since the 1960s, innovated on details (it had an auto focus lock, so you were not limited on getting the middle of your picture in focus, but could recompose after having focused), but otherwise stayed the course.
In 1981, coinciding with the release of the X-700, and the unveiling of Minolta’s new round, blue “rising sun” logo thought up by graphic design legend Saul Bass, the Hi-Matic AF got a makeover and became the AF2, to bring its look subtly in line with the X-700. Both were affordable yet not cheap, solidly performing cameras in their respective niches. A typical camera store ad in Popular Photography from 1983 prices an X-700 with two lenses and a few extras at just under $300 (US). The AF2, with an ambitious original list price of $250 sold for $100, including the case, two years after its introduction. (The AF2-M was $140).
Both sported a sleek, black, angular look that is forever associated with the 1980s – the technotronic age of Casio, early home computers, and MTV. The AF’s autofocusing system was updated from a passive one to an active one, rivaling the Canon AF35M’s.
In 1982, the AF2 received an even more modern, motorized sister, the AF2-M. The trend towards small, ever more automatic cameras usable even by absolute photography beginners was well on its way. Its current outgrowth is the smartphone camera: good enough for most people most of the time, but not longer a dedicated tool with manual settings and professional control over image parameters.
The camera that now sits on the table next to me, liberated from – judging from the almost imperceptible strands of lens fungus that adorn the rear element of the 38mm f2.8 lens that produces joyful color and sharp black and white images – a damp closet or garage, still looks almost pristine. The mold would have rendered it useless (“uneconomical to repair”) before too long, but it’s not now noticeable on pictures, and since the fungus that in wet climates so often attacks optical lenses is averse to UV light, it’s all the more reason to take this camera out and about and just… shoot.
After a few days worth of research and search search on eBay, this particular AF2 was mine for under $20 including shipping. It takes two regular AA batteries, and any kind of 35mm film you want to throw at it, but has a maximum ISO of 400 in its exposure settings. The manual remarks that you should set it for ISO 400 when using ISO 1000 film. In all likelihood this means that the camera will treat it like ISO 400 film, but that the manual writers felt confident the one stop plus change overexposure would not hurt the resulting images. Since the AF2 has a built in pop-up flash, I haven’t found the 400 ISO limitation particularly problematic yet.
The flash is small and not particularly powerful, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s enough for pictures of individuals or small groups, and that’s fine by me. I appreciate that the camera will beep if there’s low light, but won’t insist on activating the flash before firing. To activate it, move the “flash on” slider and hear it pop up with a satisfying clack. Charge time seems to be about five seconds when depleted, less if there’s still some charge left. The flash can also be used when there’s plenty light, as a fill flash, for example. The fact that the AF2 has a leaf shutter makes this all the more exciting and useful.
My AF2 came with a set of third party tele and wide lens converters and small goggles to indicate the changed field of view in the camera’s viewfinder. They seem like nice additions, but are by no means essential to enjoy the camera. They screw into the AF2’s 46mm filter mount if you need them. In this, they resemble the screw on lenses offered by Fuji for the X100 and X100s, though I would wager the newer lenses, benefitting from the fact that they are made by the manufacturer of the camera, and use electronic corrections applied in camera, offer much better picture quality.
In fact, the 2010s era digital X100s and the 1980s film AF2 have quite a few things in common. They both look like, but are not rangefinders. They have fixed lenses with similar fields of view (23mm f2 on APS-C format on the Fuji, 38mm f2.8 on 35mm on the Minolta), share a similar size, have autofocus and an on board flash that can be activated or deactivated according to the user’s wishes. They have decent build quality, though the edge goes to the Fuji, with the Minolta’s plastic wind lever and rewind spool looking a bit more flimsy than necessary. They are quickly ready to shoot, and both give good picture quality, though of course each offers the up- and downsides of its respective kin in the film vs. digital debate. They are both quiet cameras. Both use leaf shutters. The Minolta’s goes off with a small “snitch” sound that almost sounds like a repressed sneeze, while the Fuji’s clicks almost imperceptibly.
For some applications, they actually can fill the same photographic niche. If you need a good quality camera for street, travel, people, or vacation photography and aren’t looking for full image control, either will easily suffice.
There are, of course, differences. If you need something to take white water rafting, the cheap old Minolta might be a better bet than the expensive Fuji. Likewise, if you need instant feedback and digital turnaround times, only the Fuji will do. Also, 30 years of camera development have not been for nothing. The Fuji has video, manual controls, and the high ISOs nowadays associated with big sensored digital cameras. If I needed to pick just one camera to do everything, the Fuji it would be. Then again, the Fuji is battery hungry and uses proprietary lithium rechargeables, while the Minolta happily sips AA batteries, alkaline or rechargeable, of any provenance. The Fuji is also $1300 sans case, while a fully functional AF2 will set you back an average of $20. That’s 65 AF2s for the price of one Fuji. Film, of course, costs money, but so do SD cards, backup hard disks, and extra batteries.
Why would one even attempt to compare two products from a full human generation apart that were designed for different people in different eras? For the same reason that one would ever look back at history; to try and understand where we are now, and understand how we got here. Also, to remind oneself that the amount of money you invest in a gadget often has very little correlation to the enjoyment you can get out of it.
So, what is there to consider if you want to buy an AF2? Luckily, not a whole lot. If you’re trolling garage sales or looking on eBay, make sure the shutter and flash work. Even sellers that do not know anything about cameras can often be asked to pop in batteries and try out those fundamental functions if you tell them the AF2 takes common AA batteries. Since the case was usually sold with the camera, most AF2s today still come in one. It’s a useful thing to have. I usually use mine as a bottom half case and bring the lens cap if I need to throw the Hi-Matic in a bag (the lens cap also prevents the shutter from firing accidentally). Check if there’s bad lens fungus, unless you’re going for an artsy out of focus vibe in your pictures. Finally, as a result of 1970s and 1980s Japanese camera manufacturers’ reliance on foam to make their cameras light tight, your AF2 will likely have some of that now degraded foam gunking up its film compartment.
This can easily though somewhat messily be cleaned out using some toothpicks, cotton swab, and rubbing alcohol. The little Minolta does not seem to rely on the foam to keep the film in its belly from undue exposure, however. I cleaned out all the foam, and immediately put a test roll through it without any visible light leaks. Eventually, I’m sure I’ll put light seals back just to be on the safe side, but it seems to me that if you keep the bottom case on while you use the camera, you won’t have much trouble.
Apart from that, the AF2 offers some useful functions, a very good and reasonably fast lens, enough automation to capture quick snapshots without feeling like an overengineered plastic wonder that whirrs and whines at the most inopportune moments, and a fun throwback design that looks perfectly in tune with Minolta’s SLR offerings from the same era.
If you want to learn the nuts and bolts of exposure and film photography, then the AF2 is not for you. It is for you if you like the look of film, but don’t much care about the technical ins and outs of photography, or if you already have a more manual camera and want something smaller, faster, and cheaper to accompany you every day, or during a vacation trip where expensive gear is liable to get stolen or damaged (beach, anyone?).
If you need any more convincing, just look at the pictures.
Those Minolta Colors
Information is plentiful online about this camera. It was introduced in 1981, and could be bought new still in 1999. In essence, it was produced from a time when you could still buy all-metal all-manual SLRs new until the digital era began.
Minolta’s Rokkor SR-mount lenses have a reputation for being mostly excellent, and can be had cheaply these days, mostly because no digital camera will natively support them. The only way to use them on a digital camera is with an adapter, and the only camera so far that will accept them and also take full-frame pictures is the recently released Sony A7/A7R.
The X-700 is certainly no high-tech whiz-bang DSLR-type wonder of microchiped technology these days, but it also doesn’t feel ancient when you use it. Its claim to fame in the early 1980s was its P-Mode, which selects aperture and shutter speed automatically, leaving only focusing to the photographer. Yes, that’s not a big thing now. It was a big thing then.
Certainly, the emphasis here was on simplicity, and the X-700 delivers. It’s the kind of camera you can hand off to a complete photography newbie, and as long as they get the focus right, usable pictures will result.
But the X-700 also lets you take control and experiment.
The only major quibble I have with the camera so far is that it doesn’t like the cold. At all. It frequently needs coercing to work in temperatures even slightly above freezing, though I recently purchased some lithium batteries that might help in that regard.
Despite being marketed as a professional camera initially, the X-700 never seems to have grabbed much of that market. It does have all the necessary accoutrements, however, including a massive motor drive. The motor drive is really something you’ll want for this camera. It simply feels good in your hand, and is a lot of fun to use.
Without it, the X-700 is nicely small and portable, especially with the 45/f2 lens that often comes attached to it. If walk-around type street photography is the name of your game, the X-700 – small, black, and with some really great and cheap fast primes – will deliver. Yes, the shutter is not completely silent. But neither is that of a modern DSLR.
With the drive and a portrait or zoom lens attached (the cheap and excellent MD 35-70/f3.5, a version of which was also sold as a Leica lens, is a favorite), the camera becomes a different beast. It will do a respectable-for-film 3.5 frames per second, and with the dedicated flash unit attached, it wouldn’t look out of place in the hands of a news photographer. Well, if there were any of those left. More likely, you’ll want to use that configuration for travel photography, if you don’t mind being that tourist with the big camera around their neck. The motor drive also has a dedicated shutter button for vertical pictures, so portraiture is another thing the X-700 excels at, especially with a matching through-the-lens flash such as the 360 PX that was once sold as an accessory.
The more I learn about analog photography, and about what styles of camera and photo-taking I prefer, the more I keep picking up the X-700. Once I weed out the camera collection I have, kind of accidentally, amassed over the past few months, I will likely get rid of many impulse buys and once seemingly good investments. Along with the Rollei 35, the Minolta X-700, however, is likely to stick around. The 35-70/f3.5 lens especially has proven wonderfully versatile. Provided I want to keep taking pictures with that one, the only real upgrade path from an X-700 (or any of the Minoltas) would be a Leica R camera. But that would mean switching to yet another obsolete camera system, and giving up one thing that adds to the X-700’s draw: it’s cheap, and so many were made that you’ll never worry about losing and replacing it. In fact, I already ended up with another X-700, and also its somewhat less capable sister, the XGM.
Through a Rollei 35
Through a Rollei 35, ein Album auf Flickr.
I’ll talk about the arsenal soon. What camera do you use for what kind of picture? Digital, figital, analog? Small, big, or in between? But that’s for another day.
For now, though, suffice it to say that the one that’s proven itself indispensable in the short time I’ve had it is this one: a Rollei 35 T.
Much has been written about this little camera, its inauspicious beginnings as a side project by renowned camera designer Heinz Waaske, its production history – Germany and Singapore, and back to Germany – its choice of fixed lenses and their respective qualities, and most of all its small size and against-the-grain ergonomics.