New Toy Alert: Minolta Autocord CDSIII
Photographers suffer from a disease called Gear Acquisition Syndrome or GAS for short. There is no cure, only temporary remission. I like my Twin Lens Reflex cameras, owning a pair of Rolleicords, a Series E 3.5 Planar Rolleiflex and a Mamiya C220f is testament to that. Now I was always curious about Minolta Autocords because of their reputation for amazing lenses. Well, I found one at Burlington Camera, everything worked except the meter which is no surprise. Autocords are a different beast than Rollei and Mamiya TLRs. You load the film up top instead of the bottom and you don't have a focus knob on the side but a lever on the bottom. The dreaded lever, if you're to stumble across an Autocord chances are that lever is seized up, don't force it. The engineers at Minolta made the fatal mistake of using "Pot Metal" alloy which is pretty weak. There are a lot of Autocords out there with broken levers. Now I remember one photographer/tinkerer posted on his website...