Milsurp After Hours

Got this Minolta X-370 off of ebay for $13 with the "repair or parts" but looks great advertisement. And.. sure enough it didn't work. But.. I did some research and discovered the the likely problem was the capacitor. And one sign would be if there was a smoke mark on the underside of the base plate because an electrical surge had blown the capacitor. And....sure enough there was. So I ordered a bag of capacitors from China off of ebay for $3 delivered. I figured I couldn't get hurt much of it didn't work.

My son the computer engineer and programmer knows about this electrical stuff. He told me my soldering iron needed a heat gauge and that the solder I had was too thick and that I better be careful of the plastic board the capacitor was attached to. And .. be sure to put it in with the correct polarity. Then he volunteered to do it for me because he had the correct tools and solder and knew about such things and that was just great with me.

Well... the new capacitor did the trick. Now the electronic shutter and the light meter and the light meter blinking lights all work like they did back in 1984 when Minolta launched this model of the end of the line of manual focus cameras.

It does have an "auto" feature that does the you pick the aperture and it makes up a shutter speed. You can go full manual and it shows you by blinking lights what speed to aperture possibilities work. The flash sink is at 60 and I tried a couple flash photos with a generic Vivitar flash that had and it worked fine.

If you want to see what the repair looks like. This is the video that encouraged me :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0XjHPRLzhk

Took it out to the park on the way to the grocery store with a Minolta 50mm MD lens and an older Vivitar zoom with a MC lens. Works ok. The 50mm was a much better lens though. Not the greatest camera ever but it was fun to shoot and it takes decent photos. And I have several more lenses that will fit it.

I was at an auction yesterday when the European version of this camera, the Minolta X300 came up. There was an opening bid of not too much so I put a bid in. No-one else bid so it came home with me. It came with an MD 35 to 70 zoom lens, a flash unit and a bag to put it all in. Mine is the black version that is in nice condition. I turned it on when I got home and it was dead. I has visions of dead capacitors, however, I put in a couple of new batteries and all the LEDs lit up and the shutter fired OK. The self timer works so it looks like it is good to go. I now have to buy some film. I haven't done that for a few years.
Regards
Peter.

It wouldn't cock the shutter or fire if the capacitor was faulty. Great that you got one to play with.

And now some results Peter

Yeah, Peter, it's easy. Try B&W film. Easy to develop yourself, and a lot cheaper than paying for developing if you get to liking taking "real" photographs and do it regularly. Not a hard process at all to develop your own and view after scanning on a photo scanner. The start up costs are not any worse than starting reloading.

I don't know anything about cameras, but I did recognise the ploy to get your son
to fix it for you. My wife used that on me our whole marriage, if I didn't get around to
her "honeydos", then she would start it herself. Out of self defense I would jump in and
do it to save myself from having to fix her damage on top the original project.......
Well played Robert.......

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It worked out better than if I fooled with it Vern. However........I don't think I've used it after that one time more than a year ago.

It worked out better than if I fooled with it Vern..it actually got fixed right. However........I don't think I've used it after that one time more than a year ago.