Minolta srT202

I started this forum for any collecting hobby and it turned into my camera collecting and using forum. I use it mostly to keep a record of my photo adventures. Nobody but me seems to have photo adventures that visit here....but however. I have so many cameras now that I forget which is which and which ones work and which ones don't. If you have cameras and adventures you would be welcome to post here.

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Niner
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Minolta srT202

Post by Niner » Sat Dec 02, 2017 3:25 pm

Got this camera with two lenses several months ago and never got around to shooting it until yesterday. The battery for the meter was a problem I think is the reason why. I changed the battery again and this time the meter perked into life.

This camera was the flagship of the T series that Minolta made from 66 to 81. It was still a mechanical shutter and no auto focus camera. But it was pretty sporty in it's day because of all the features... like "CLC" ... which stood for constant light compensator. What this means was that unlike the lessor models like the Pentax K1000 and other popular SLR cameras of the era, it had two light cells in the pentaprisim housing that read both the highlight and the shadow in what was seen in the viewfinder and split the difference in the needle match indication. The competion only had center weighted meters. A bragging point in the day. It also had a depth of field button at the bottom of the lens housing and a window in the back top corner to tell you if you had film in the camera or not. And....whoopee.. when you looked through the viewfinder there was a window at the top that would back light to show the aperture and a bracketed indication on a list of shutter speeds to show you what you had it on in the bottom window. As you moved the shutter or aperture rings or knobs the match needle would react. Notice.. back light..no electronic light behind it, only daylight. And... one other thing that comes to mind, it had a circular finger operated by rough surface contact switch on the bottom. You could turn the camera meter on or off or into test mode to see if the battery was working. Other competitive cameras generally didn't have anything like. And last....and perhaps least... the battery chamber was opened by thumb twisting friction rather than a loose coin.

The camera worked pretty good. The Minolta 50 mm was really as sharp as it's advertised reputation. The Tokina 70-210 wasn't bad either. The biggest problem was that the meter seemed to be weighted to faster shutter speeds for aperture than I would have guessed best. I think the dual light sensors might have played a part in that perhaps one of them wasn't working. I developed my negative an extra 40 seconds on guess at compensation for underexposure but I could have added less.
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Niner
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Re: Minolta srT202

Post by Niner » Mon Oct 17, 2022 8:59 pm

Tried it out today again after reading raves on a facebook site. I had pretty much forgotten I even owned a SRT 202. I'd forgotten it was the top of the mountain in tech innovation in 1975. But...I do like Minolta and think it was the lead dog in the camera sled wars of once upon a time and down to the time it all came crashing over the cliff into the lost and nearly gone forever void when digital came in. Why do you think Leica threw in with them for a while other than to steal what they knew?

First thing that went wrong was the brass battery holder for the make do replacement for a defunct mercury battery only seemed to work if I turned the camera on and off a couple times. And what was supposed to be good about the camera was that the meter had two sensors and averaged light rather than a single spot meter. However, at this stage of the game it wasn't a big deal like multi point readings that came much later. I had a hand held light meter and I wasn't altogether ignorant about guessing proper exposure. The second thing that went wrong was my fault. I made up a new batch of D76 developer and didn't let it sit long enough nor check the temperature. I then proceeded to develop the film at probably a minute over what it needed resulting in darker negatives than I wanted.

It was another adventure though. If I really cared about the photographs as foot notes to my life I'd have used a digital camera.

This still isn't one of my favorite cameras. It will go back on the shelf for a long while. However, as a basic camera in SLR it's worthy.
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