- Photos from my minolta autocord serial numbers#
- Photos from my minolta autocord serial number#
- Photos from my minolta autocord free#
From beach cheese cake to portraits to gp.
My experience started with the Minolta Autocord started in the 50’s. This reading has been a delightful pleasure. If you don’t like the camera you can generally sell it for what you bought it for on ebay.ġ4cm high, 7.5cm wide, 10cm deep (5.5″x3″x4″)įiled Under: Reviews Tagged With: 6圆, cameras, medium format, Minolta, TLR Although the camera is completely manual, it will give higher quality images than 35mm film. I had planned to get a CLA but I never got around to it).įinally, buying a used Autocord is a very inexpensive way to get involved with medium format photography. (I did precisely measure the shutter speed at the various settings, but since the delays varied with the shutter time, carrying around a table of time adjustments was simply too much hassle. However, after my initial experimentation, I haven’t used it much because I prefer to shoot chromes and the shutter speeds were simply not accurate enough. The Autocord produces very nice negatives and can yield enlargements unmatched by 35mm film. This means that you can see the image at the exact moment of capture. One advantage I discovered with the Autocord is that because it has separate lenses for viewing and taking, there is no mirror blackout when the shutter fires as with SLR cameras. The scene also appears as a mirror image and it took me some time to adjust. This helped although the image was still not as bright as I would have liked. I removed the ground glass and cleaned the mirror box which was very dusty. Later camera versions have a selenium light meter.Īlthough Autocords are supposed to have a bright viewfinder, mine was very dim and it was a struggle to compose and focus in well lit environments. I exposed based on the sunny 16 rule and leaned toward overexposure. The camera had no meter but this wasn’t a problem as I shot black and white film which has a wide exposure range.
Photos from my minolta autocord serial numbers#
This website has a list of Autocord serial numbers along with production dates and version differences.
Photos from my minolta autocord serial number#
The serial number of my camera is 143649 indicating that it was a 1959 Autocord with an Optiper MXS shutter. The shutter speeds were, however, slow by as much as 2 stops and the mechanical self timer often stuck and failed to fire the shutter. There were no light leaks and the aperture blades opened and closed freely.
Photos from my minolta autocord free#
The lens was clear and free of fungus and the focus lever worked smoothly. Although, the camera was in bad cosmetic shape, it was in good working condition considering its age. I bought my Autocord used on ebay for about $80. Since image quality is proportional to the film size, this camera can produce much higher quality enlargements than any 35mm camera. A 6×6 image (56mm x 56mm) is approximately 3.6x larger than a 35mm frame (24x36mm).
The Autocord is a medium format camera and it records 6×6 images on 120 roll film. If you get the chance, do come and join in.Minolta Autocord TLR with Optiper shutter My individual portraits can only give you the tiniest taste of what a great celebration it is. This viewpoint gives my subjects a statuesque appearance and also gives me a greater chance of getting a cleaner frame of clear sky behind them.īrighton Pride is the UK's biggest and attracts hundreds of thousands of people to the city every year. An added advantage of the top mounted viewfinder is that I naturally shoot from lower down. It’s not as fast to use as a digital but people seem to appreciate the extra effort that goes into making the picture. It has two lenses, a viewing lens and a taking lens, and to focus you need to look down into the glass viewfinder. Using an old camera is a great conversation starter, it’s visually unusual compared to the digital SLR’s most people are using. As people are generally trying to get to their start points and organise themselves, I limit myself to I shoot one frame for each subject before moving on This has helped give my shots a consistent look across the years.
Each year I use the same medium format film camera, a fixed lens 1961 Minolta Autocord loaded with the same Fuji portrait film. With my background in advertising art direction I’m more comfortable working to a brief so even on my personal photographic projects I like to set myself limitations to work within. Since 2009 I’ve been shooting individual portraits and through experience I’ve found that the hour before the parade starts when everyone is buzzing with anticipation is perfect for me. Pride is a real fun event and though people go to great lengths to create their costumes, none of them take themselves too seriously. What I find the most visually rewarding in this celebration of our city’s diverse community are the drag queens and costumed paraders. As a Brighton photographer, taking photos at Pride each year is an absolute must.