Fixed Lens Rangefinder

Minolta HiMatic 7s

Minolta Hi-Matic 7s – My Gateway Drug into the World of Camera Collecting – By Markus Hainz

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As with most photographers over a certain age, I began my photography shooting film back in the late 1980s. By the mid 2000s I was shooting only digital for work and decided to get rid of almost all my film gear. Then around 2012 a wave of nostalgia overcame me and I decided to get myself back into shooting film. I decided to go for a Hi-Matic 7s as that was what I remember as our family camera when I was growing up and I happened to think it’s a very elegant looking rangefinder camera. Hipsters would look on in envy as I’d pass them by, camera dangling from my wrist from a hand crafted leather strap…

Yashica Electro 35 GT – Finding a Rangefinder – By Francois Marlier

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My name is François, and I’m a 30 year old born in Belgium and currently living in Denmark. When I was around 15, my granddad gave me his Canon AE-1, describing it to me at the time as one of the most sold and easiest to use film cameras. This is how I started shooting, and continued shooting for a couple of years, on and off, mostly leaving the aperture on automatic and not much understanding all the subtleties and possibilities of photography.

Then in 2009-2010, as I was getting more interested and with digital SLRs all the rage, my families gifted me a Canon 500D with a 18-250 Sigma lens, which I used quite intensely, learning more about the exposure triangle, trying long exposures and light painting in the dark; shooting family events and then parties at university, and more or less letting my grandad’s camera collect dust.

In 2015, I then sold my Canon 500D and bought a second-hand Fuji film X100s – never having been a huge fan of (nor really getting skilled at) editing my photos, the Fuji was a perfect companion – good lens, fairly compact, stylish, great jpegs. And I still have it to this day.

The call of film

But then, during the pandemic, I was like many people looking for something to help me pass the time, and decided to get back into film.

Minolta Hi-Matic E – Minolta’s ‘Difficult’ Second Electro Camera – By Bob Janes

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The Hi-Matic E (previously also reviewed by Hamish here) is a Minolta rangefinder with a Rokkor lens. The lens is a 40 mm f/1.7 lens of six elements in four groups. The same specification has been used in other much sought after Minolta rangefinder cameras, like the Hi-Matic 7sii.

The Minolta Hi-Matics have history. John Glenn took a rebranded (and highly modified) Hi-Matic into space. That said, the Hi-Matic E is an odd camera. Caught in an eddy; it has ‘quirks’.

Beauty shot of the equipment I'm reviewing.

Kodak Retina IIIC – Back into Film with a Charity Auction Find – By Stewart Waller

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I recently fell for analog cameras, especially vintage ones. It feels like a rabbit hole much of the time, chasing that elusive, cosmetically beautiful, functionally accurate, 60+ year-old technology  (and expecting magic when I find it).

Although I learned photography in journalism school around 1990 and shot for the local paper, I largely stayed within my comfort zone with my trusty Nikon FM2 and a few cheap lenses. I first adopted digital in 1999, and was fully digital by 2002 as a corporate art director and photographer, with professional state-of-the-art digital Nikons (think DCS 760, D1-X). So, knowing next to nothing about this quirky world of aging treasures, I embarked on a buying binge.

And now I own a lot of old broken cameras. But like any treasure hunt, sometimes you find gold or a diamond in the rough. Such was the case with this Kodak Retina IIIC (Big C)

Konica Auto S3

Konica Auto S3 – Small and Perfectly Formed – By Bob Janes

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Coinciding with their centenary in the early 70s, Konica fused two of their camera lines together. Since 1968 they had made a compact rangefinder camera called the C35. They had also made a series of fast fixed lens rangefinders in the ‘Auto S’ series. Now they produced a camera with the body of the C35 and the lens of the Auto S cameras. This was known as the C35 FD in Japan and the Konica Auto S3 elsewhere. The Auto S3 was finished in black anodised aluminium, while the C35 FD had a plain anodised finish

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