1963 Minolta Uniomat II
A little Minolta rangefinder that has been in the cupboard awaiting some TLC. It just needed a good clean and some new light seals. Even the old selenium light meter is working and appears accurate much to my surprise. A test roll of film sometime in the near future will back this up hopefully!
An interesting shutter design on these cameras as detailed below.
© Dominic Scott 2025
From Wikipedia:
In 1960 Chiyoda (after 1962, Minolta) launched its Uniomat series of rangefinder cameras with coupled match-needle selenium meter. This camera joined the many other early "automatic exposure" cameras with built-in exposure meters that were released to the market in the 1959/1960 period.
Minolta's approach to automatic exposure permitted only certain shutter/aperture combinations, an early sort of "programmed" exposure. This fixed combination of shutter speeds and aperture values also permitted a very unusual characteristic of the Citizen shutter: there is no separate aperture diaphragm in this camera. The shutter leaves are used for both the shutter as well as for aperture control. At shutter speeds of 1/100 second and slower, the shutter opens fully as normal and the shutter speed varies according to the exposure value selected (which is automatically set by adjusting the match-needle metering). At these lower shutter speeds the full f/2.8 aperture is always used. At shutter speeds above 1/100 second, the shutter leaves open only partially, with an opening size that varies according to exposure values. In this manner the effective shutter speed and the matching aperture are both controlled by the variable shutter leaf opening. The smaller the opening, the faster the effective shutter speed and the higher the aperture value. This clever design also allows for a very unusual top shutter speed of 1/1000 second, a very high shutter speed for a leaf shutter.
1963 Minolta Uniomat II
A little Minolta rangefinder that has been in the cupboard awaiting some TLC. It just needed a good clean and some new light seals. Even the old selenium light meter is working and appears accurate much to my surprise. A test roll of film sometime in the near future will back this up hopefully!
An interesting shutter design on these cameras as detailed below.
© Dominic Scott 2025
From Wikipedia:
In 1960 Chiyoda (after 1962, Minolta) launched its Uniomat series of rangefinder cameras with coupled match-needle selenium meter. This camera joined the many other early "automatic exposure" cameras with built-in exposure meters that were released to the market in the 1959/1960 period.
Minolta's approach to automatic exposure permitted only certain shutter/aperture combinations, an early sort of "programmed" exposure. This fixed combination of shutter speeds and aperture values also permitted a very unusual characteristic of the Citizen shutter: there is no separate aperture diaphragm in this camera. The shutter leaves are used for both the shutter as well as for aperture control. At shutter speeds of 1/100 second and slower, the shutter opens fully as normal and the shutter speed varies according to the exposure value selected (which is automatically set by adjusting the match-needle metering). At these lower shutter speeds the full f/2.8 aperture is always used. At shutter speeds above 1/100 second, the shutter leaves open only partially, with an opening size that varies according to exposure values. In this manner the effective shutter speed and the matching aperture are both controlled by the variable shutter leaf opening. The smaller the opening, the faster the effective shutter speed and the higher the aperture value. This clever design also allows for a very unusual top shutter speed of 1/1000 second, a very high shutter speed for a leaf shutter.