Minolta V2

The Minolta V2 exists to show off one number on its shutter ring, 1/2000. In April 1958 no other leaf shutter went that fast, and Minolta's own company history still lists the V2 as the first camera in the world to do it. The catch sits right next to that number on the ring. That speed only works from f/8 down to f/22.

Blame the blades. The Optiper-Citizen HS shutter runs B plus a full second through 1/2000, and at the two top settings the blades never swing all the way open before they close again. So Minolta engraved those two speeds in blue and red and put matching colored lines beside the aperture scale on the lens, so you can see at a glance which stops each one allows. 1/1000 wants f/4 or smaller. From a second up to 1/500, the whole f/2 to f/22 range is yours.

Pick one up and the weight is the first surprise. About 780 g, roughly what a Leica M3 weighs with a 50mm mounted, and all of it clockwork and glass with no battery and no meter anywhere. What you get instead is an EV window on the lens barrel. You take a reading with a handheld meter, set the EV, and then slide aperture and speed against each other along that line. People who already think in exposure values will find it tidy. Everyone else needs a roll or two before it clicks.

The lens is why you put up with the heft. The Rokkor-PF 45mm f/2 is six elements in five groups, and the PF code also means every glass-to-air surface is coated. It focuses down to 0.8 m and takes 46mm filters. At 45mm it sees a touch wider than a fifty, a good everyday length for street work and travel, where a fixed lens is no real handicap.

Here is the problem: the headline feature is the least usable part of the camera. With ISO 400 in plain full sun, 1/2000 at f/8 is about right, and the shutter earns its fame. But you cannot shoot 1/2000 at f/2 to throw a sunlit background out of focus, and in practice most of your frames end up at 1/500 or slower, like any other leaf-shutter rangefinder of its day. The V2 also had a short run. The V3 replaced it after about eighteen months, with a 45mm f/1.8, a 1/3000 top speed and an uncoupled selenium meter.

These days it is more of a collector's camera than a daily shooter, bought by people who want the first 1/2000 leaf shutter on the shelf and are still curious enough to load it. Since there is no meter, the Zone Light Meter app is the meter the V2 never had: take an incident reading, dial the EV into the barrel window, and pick the pair that fits the colored lines. The leaf shutter adds one more thing worth having, since flash syncs at every speed, so daylight fill at 1/500 is no trouble. Buy one that has been serviced, because a sluggish shutter undoes the one thing this camera was built to prove.