Minolta Film Cameras Guide: Autocord, CLE, X-700, Maxxum

The Autocord, and which shutter yours has

Readers asked for two cameras this autumn, the Autocord and the CLE, and the questions were nearly the same. Is an Autocord a real alternative to a Rolleicord? Is a CLE worth Leica money? Yes, and almost. The longer answers sent me back through a stack of Minolta manuals. Compacts can wait.

The Autocord's trick is the focusing lever. Minolta first tried it on the 1954 Minoltacord: a lever under the lens board that you push with a fingertip, where a Rolleiflex has a knob on the side. Every Autocord kept it, from the first one in October 1955 to the Autocord III of December 1965, the last twin lens reflex Minolta made. The taking lens barely changed. It is a four-element Rokkor 75mm f/3.5, a Tessar type, under a 75mm f/3.2 viewing lens, and both wear Bay I bayonets, so Rolleicord hoods and filters fit.

The shutter is what changed, and it matters for exposure. The original 1955 body, sold as the Autocord MXS or MXV after its Citizen-made shutter, stops at 1/400. A third of a stop is nothing until Portra 400 meets a bright beach: sunny 16 plus a stop is f/22 at 1/400, with nothing left. The 1957 Autocord RA keeps that 1/400 shutter and adds masks for 4x4 and 4x5 cm frames.

The Autocord L, also October 1955, hides an uncoupled selenium meter behind a nameplate that flips up, reading in Light Values. Early L bodies have a Seikosha Rapid with F sync only. No electronic flash on those; the 1958 LMX moved to a Seikosha-MX with M, F and X. The Autocord RG of 1961 is the meterless workhorse: B and 1 to 1/500, M and X sync, a Light Value scale on the rim so you can dial in the EV your meter gives and swap speed against aperture. It was built across the 1962 rename of Chiyoda Kogaku to Minolta Camera, so the lens reads Chiyoko or Minolta. In 1965 came the Autocord CdS, with a battery CdS meter (EV 3 to 17 at ASA 100, still uncoupled) and new glass Minolta called the New Rokkor, and in December the CdS III and the Autocord III, both taking 220.

Which to buy? A late meterless one. A selenium cell from 1955 is a coin flip, and you will carry a meter anyway.

The CL and the CLE are different cameras

The Leica CL was developed by Leitz with Minolta, and Minolta built it, from 1973 to 1976. Japan got it as the Leitz Minolta CL. It has a cloth shutter running vertically from 1/2 to 1/1000 plus B, flash at 1/60, and a CdS cell on an arm that swings in front of the curtain until you fire. That arm is the fragile bit. Frame lines are 40, 50 and 90.

Its lenses were the Summicron-C 40mm f/2 and the Elmar-C 90mm f/4. Both have the CL's inclined rangefinder cam, and Leitz warned it might not couple precisely on M bodies. Plenty of owners report no trouble, but test at f/2 up close first. Then the filter trap: the front thread is 39 x 0.75mm, not E39, and Series 5.5 filters drop into the hood. Forcing an E39 filter on can ruin the thread.

The Minolta CLE is Minolta's own, announced in 1980 and on sale in 1981: aperture priority, metering off the film, TTL flash. Here is the spec people get wrong (our catalogue did too). Auto runs steplessly from 1/1000 to 1/2 s. Manual runs 1 s to 1/1000 plus B, and nothing on the body reaches 4 s. Electronic flash syncs at 1/60 and will not fire faster. In manual the finder LEDs stay dark, so you read the speed in A first, then switch over and set it.

The finder adds a 28mm frame line, which is why the M-Rokkor 28mm f/2.8 exists only in CLE form (1981, 54,000 yen, seven elements, 135 g). Many copies grow white spots or haze behind the front element. Phillip Reeve put a spotted one at about $200 and a clean one at $450 or more in September 2023. On a Leica M it brings up the 35/135 lines, so frame loosely. The M-Rokkor 40mm f/2 shares the Summicron-C's six-element formula but takes plain 40.5mm filters. CL-era copies are single-coated, some engraved QF, with the serial on the front ring and the inclined cam; CLE-era copies are multicoated with a normal parallel cam. Reeve had a good one at $350 or more in January 2024. The M-Rokkor 90mm f/4 is the bargain, around $200 in his December 2018 review, and the hardest to nail on the CLE's short rangefinder base.

SR mount: SR-T to X-700, and the XG trap

Every manual-focus Minolta SLR sits on the SR bayonet that started with the SR-2 in 1958. The SR-T 101 of 1966 is the one most people learn on. Mechanical shutter, 1 s to 1/1000, match needle, and two CdS cells (Minolta's CLC) reading the top and bottom of the frame separately, so a bright sky drags the reading down less. The battery runs the meter and nothing else.

Two oddballs have no meter at all. The 1967 SR-1s took an optional clip-on meter. The SR-M of 1970 has a motor built in, 3 fps from eight AA cells. Rare and heavy.

The XD-11 (XD-7 in Europe, XD in Japan) arrived in 1977 with aperture and shutter priority in one body, and it rechecks the light as the mirror goes up. Flash at 1/100. The same year Minolta launched the cheaper XG-7, and in July 1978 B&H listed it at $195.90 against $289.90 for the XD11. Its aperture priority from 1 s to 1/1000 is lovely. Its manual speeds are unmetered: the LEDs go dark. The XG-1 and the XG-9 (1979, the first XG with depth-of-field preview) work the same way. Only the 1981 XG-M meters in manual. The XG-A and the Japanese X-7 go further and drop manual speeds entirely, leaving auto, B and X.

The X-700 of 1981 added Program mode, aperture priority down to 4 s and a metered manual mode, with flash at 1/60. It is the default answer for a reason. The Japan-only X-600 of 1983 is a curio, an X-500 sibling with focus-confirmation LEDs.

Rokkor glass worth hunting

Start with the MD Rokkor 45mm f/2 from September 1978: six elements, 125 g, a 49mm thread, and an aperture ring that stops at f/16. Five blades, so stopped-down highlights come out as pentagons. Sellers call it a pancake. At about 30mm long it is not; Minolta's real pancake was the 17mm-thin Rokkor-TD 45mm f/2.8 of 1964. Casual Photophile had it at $25 to $50 in July 2017.

The MC Rokkor-PG 58mm f/1.2 is the opposite purchase. PG is Minolta's code for five groups and seven elements. Wide open it glows; by f/2 it settles, by f/4 it is sharp. It is a lens for faces in dim rooms, which is where a reflected reading of a dark background will lie to you.

Two specialists come with metering notes. The MD Fish-Eye Rokkor 16mm f/2.8 has no front thread, just a turret holding Normal, Y52, B12 and R60 filters (older ones carry an O56 instead of the red). Through the lens the camera sees the filter; a handheld reading needs its filter factor added. The Shift CA Rokkor 35mm f/2.8 has no MC or MD coupling tab, which only matters to the meter in the body.

Maxxum, from the 7000 to the 9Ti and the STF

The Maxxum 7000 of 1985 put autofocus and the motor in the body and moved Minolta to the new A mount. SR lenses do not fit. It runs 30 s to 1/2000 with flash at 1/100.

The xi bodies are where people get lost. The 7xi (1991) wakes up as you lift it to your eye and runs to 1/8000, flash at 1/200. The 9xi (1992) reaches 1/12000 with carbon-reinforced blades and syncs at 1/300, but has no built-in flash and hid some functions behind expansion cards sold separately. Then the si years, with one real trap. The 400si and 300si set any film without a DX code to ISO 100, with no override. Bulk loaders, take note: HP5 in a blank cassette gets metered at 100. On the 400si dial in minus 2 EV of compensation. The 300si offers program modes only, so feed it DX-coded film. Careful with names: the European Dynax 500si is the US 400si, while the US 500si lets you set ISO.

The Maxxum 9 came in 1998, and in 1999 a run of 1,000 titanium 9Ti bodies with the same 1/12000 and 1/300 sync.

And the AF 135mm f/2.8 [T4.5] STF, out in Japan in December 1998 at 150,000 yen. An apodization element smooths the blur and eats light doing it. The geometry says f/2.8; the film gets T4.5. The ring and the camera both work in T-numbers, T4.5 to T32, and it is manual focus, the only A-mount lens without autofocus. TTL copes. With a handheld meter, plug in 4.5. If you set f/2.8 in your sums you underexpose by about a stop and a third. The AF 200mm f/4 Macro APO G of 1999 is the other handheld trap: at 1:1, which it reaches at 50 cm, it needs a close-up correction that TTL handles for you. Konica Minolta announced its exit from cameras in January 2006, and Sony carried the A mount on.

What changed in Zone Light Meter 1.4

Version 1.4 added these to the camera and lens catalogue: 37 bodies and 26 interchangeable lenses, each with its own guide page. It also fixed our mistakes. The CLE had a 4 s slowest speed and 1/100 sync; it now says 1 s and 1/60. Pick it and the shutter wheel stops at 1 s, and the flash dialog warns you above 1/60. The STF is stored as T4.5 to T32, so the aperture wheel never offers f/2.8.

If the rim of your Autocord's shutter tops out at 400, pick the MXS / MXV entry. The plain Autocord entry assumes 1/500.