Minolta Autocord CdS / CdS II / CdS III

Minolta had already hung a selenium cell on the Autocord once, and by March 1965 the Osaka company was ready to change chemistry. The Autocord CdS arrived that month with a cadmium sulfide cell and its battery built into the nameplate between the two lenses. In December the CdS III followed, adding 220 film to 120, and export markets got the same camera badged CdS II or CdS 24. Nearly ten years after the first Autocord, the line picked up a modern meter and new glass inside a single year.

The meter is the reason to choose this body over a meterless Autocord, and it reaches into fairly dim light. The manual rates it from EV 3 to EV 17 at ASA 100, split across a high and a low range, with a film-speed scale from ASA 6 to a frankly optimistic 25,000. It couples to nothing. You take the reading, look at the dial on the right side of the body, and carry the numbers over to the shutter and aperture by hand, which costs a few seconds per frame and teaches you to think in EV. EV 3 is dim interior light, so the low range covers most indoor scenes.

The glass is the bigger story, though. Starting with this model, Minolta made the 75mm f/3.5 Rokkor from a new high-dispersion, low-refraction glass, and TLR people have called the result the New Rokkor ever since. The layout stays at four elements in three groups, stopping down to f/22, so the headline change is the glass rather than the element layout. Hood and filters attach by bayonet; Minolta lists the size as 28.5mm, the Bay I fitting, so accessories are not hard to find.

On the strap it is a 1,100 g block, and that mass helps hold the camera still at the slow end of the dial. The Citizen MVL shutter runs from a full second to 1/500 plus B, with a built-in self-timer and M and X sync. Because it is a leaf shutter, flash syncs at every one of those speeds, and for outdoor portraits that matters more than the meter does. Check the built-in reading against Zone Light Meter, set the ambient exposure at 1/500 if the sky demands it, and let a small flash lift the faces in the foreground. A focal-plane SLR of 1965 would have capped the flash at a far slower speed.

Age is the real problem. Every CdS cell in these bodies is around sixty years old, it needs a working battery to say anything, and a meter that reads a stop off is worse than no meter because you believe it. Check yours against a known reading before trusting it with a roll of Portra.

Its natural rivals on the used market are the Yashica Mat-124 G and the Rolleicord. The Yashica couples its meter to the controls; this camera never does, so the choice comes down to the lens and to how you like to work. If 220 matters to you, look for the CdS III, CdS II or CdS 24 name on the front; the first CdS of March 1965 is a 120 camera.