Minolta Minoltaflex III

Drop your eyes an inch below the hood and the exposure is right there. On the Minoltaflex III, speed and aperture show in a small window above the viewing lens, so checking them takes a glance. Nobody has to tip a kilogram of camera forward to squint at the shutter rim. Minolta put that window on the camera in November 1953, on what turned out to be the last body sold under the Minoltaflex name. In 1955 the lever-focus Autocord arrived, and the Minoltaflex line was finished.

Set it beside the Minoltaflex II and the differences live on the front panel. Out went the Konan shutter; in came a Seikosha Rapid (type 17) with B, a full second, then 1/2, 1/5, 1/10, 1/25, 1/50, 1/100, 1/250 and 1/500. Both lenses got Bay I bayonets, so the same hoods and filters fit either lens. The taking lens is engraved ROKKOR 1:3.5 f=75mm CHIYOKO and closes through a ten-blade iris to f/22. Above it, a three-element VIEW-ROKKOR at f/3.2 gathers a little more light than the taking lens. On a dim ground glass at dusk, that small margin helps.

The side knob focuses down to 0.8 m. Most TLRs of its day did not get that close, and portraits show the difference: a head and shoulders fills the square instead of floating in the middle of it. Winding is by knob as well, and cocking is its own stroke at the shutter. Minolta linked the two in one sensible way. The shutter will not cock until the film has been advanced, which rules out stacking two frames on one by accident. At a kilogram, it hangs on a neck strap like a small brick.

What slows you down is the number of separate motions per frame. Turn the knob to focus, wind, cock, set the speed, set the aperture. Nothing on the body suggests what those settings ought to be, because there is no meter at all. The Autocord moved focusing to a thumb lever, and after a week with one, the III's knob starts to feel slow. Any Seikosha this old also deserves a test of its slow speeds before you trust a roll to them.

At launch it listed at 43,500 yen, cut to 37,500 yen in 1955, the year the Autocord appeared. People buy one now for the Chiyoko Rokkor and the 0.8 m close focus; the settings window is the pleasant surprise that comes after. With no cell to fail, an incident reading from the Zone Light Meter app is the meter this body never had: read the light on the subject, set speed and aperture until the window agrees, and shoot.

It suits a photographer who works at a measured pace, whether that means portraits by a north window or tabletop still lifes. Shooters who want speed should hunt an Autocord instead. Anyone who wants the last of the Minoltaflex line has found it.