Minolta Autocord RA

Eighteen small squares from one roll of 120, each sized to fit the same 2x2 inch mount as a 35mm slide. Minolta added that trick to the Autocord in November 1957, two years after the first one, and the RA is the model that carries it. Look down into the hood and you can spot one at once. The ground glass is ruled with lines for three different frames.

All of the change is in how the camera handles film. Masks drop into the film gate, and a frame-count plate on the crank side comes off and goes back on for whichever size you are shooting. With the masks fitted, Minolta's own history says the camera gives 18 exposures in either the 4x4 or the 4x5 cm size. Hayata Camera calls the 4x4 option the super slide format. Super slides fit the same 2x2 inch mounts as 35mm, so they ran through an ordinary slide projector and put a bigger, squarer image on the screen than a 24x36 frame could. Take the masks out and you are back to twelve full squares.

The lens and shutter are the same ones the 1955 camera used. The lens is the four-element Rokkor 75mm f/3.5, stopping down to f/22, with a Bay I bayonet for filters and hoods. It was designed to cover the whole 6x6 square, so the masked sizes are simply cut from the middle of the image circle, where any lens is at its best. The MXV shutter is also unchanged, running from a full second to 1/400. That top speed falls a little short of the 1/500 that later Autocords reached, and you will only notice it with fast film in hard sun. Minolta's 70th anniversary poster shows the RA with a Chiyoko Rokkor lens, Chiyoko being short for Chiyoda Kogaku, the maker's name at the time.

In the hand it works like any other Autocord. You focus with a lever under the taking lens, wind on with a crank, and compose on a waist-level screen. That suits slow work: a tripod, a street corner you have already walked twice, a table of still lifes. There is no meter of any kind. The real weakness is the format kit itself. The masks and counter plates are small loose metal parts that are easy to lose over sixty-odd years, so before you pay, ask the seller to photograph every piece. Without them you have a plain 6x6 camera.

Provenance needs a second look too. Minolta converted earlier Autocord and Autocord L bodies toward RA spec for a fee, so a multi-format camera in a listing may have started life as something else. Read the nameplate, check what is actually in the box, and don't take the listing title on trust.

People usually cross-shop it against a Rolleiflex or a Yashica-Mat. Next to a Rolleiflex it usually sells for less, and the Rokkor holds its own. Because the leaf shutter syncs flash at every speed up to 1/400, the RA handles outdoor portraits with fill flash well. Take an ambient reading with Zone Light Meter, set the background where you want it, then let the flash lift the faces. Shoot full squares most days, and load the masks when you want slides that look bigger than 35mm on the wall.