Hi-matic 11 anyone use?

R

Rob

Guest
I picked up a near mint condition Hi-matic 11 at a flea market Saturday.
Looks nice and still functioning on a very weak battery. I thought all
the Himatics had that weird EVS? display in the viewfinder, this has
proper F stops! I also found some mercury batteries cheap too...
the Duracell ones were too weak to use, I will use them as adapters
to use the smaller size pack of 6 mercury cells(that do work)
to make a cell big enough for a canonet or similar size.
Sure looks like they used the same Rokkor 45mm F1.7 lens on about
all these cameras.. The viewfinder is very nice and it has an extra
window to display the shutter speed in the viewfinder too. A nice
touch. I also found a Ricoh 519 camera in an antique mall but did not
buy it. Another antique mall has a Contax IIa with 50mm Sonnar lens
for $400..which puts it way past my $25 or less per camera limit.
Oh and for $5 I got a mint Polaroid sx-70 Sonar model in black & chrome
for $5...
Rob
 
Update on the Himatic 11...Just got thru cleaning up the rangefinder...if it did not have
such a strange way to hookup a PC socket and hotshoe, this would be a breeze. Oh
well its not that bad. After cleaning the rangefinder its the best I have seen.
My Konica Auto S2 was very good, but this is much better.
Huge and bright and easy to see with my glasses on...I also found another 11 for
sale that is missing the rewind knob...Heck if this thing shoots decent, I may rescue
that one as well.
Got her all cleaned up and see that a technician worked on it back in 1985...so the
seals are still in good shape...Now I need a battery solution...My weak one is
about gone.
 
Rob,
The Canonet takes the larger PX625's. The smaller diameter PX675's are the same 1.35volt, and can be used by putting a thin material around the outside for a shim.
Sounds like you found some great deals, congrats.
 
For now I wadded up some aluminum foil as a shim and used one of my mercury
675 batteries and now the light meter is working much better..
 
The Hi-Matic 11 and my Hi-Matic 9 are the same, except the 9 has full manual over-ride useing the EV system for metering. It also has full program mode. I bought mine in 1969 on a clearance sale at $80 because the 11 had just come out. The lens is VERY sharp, up there with the Konica S2.
 
Have you thought of putting a Schotsky diode in the battery power supply circuit? I have done this on several cameras and then I use standard silver oxide (SR44) batteries (with an adapter to make them fit). This solution drops the 1.55v silver oxide down to the mercury oxide 1.35v rating. The beauty is the voltage decay curve of the silver oxide is identical to the mercury oxide battery, so the camera now will work as designed by the manufacturer. I think the reason the cameras were designed for the mercury oxide batteries is they were so inexpensive compared to the silver oxide batteries back then (about a 10 to 1 difference in price). I have converted my HiMatic 7, 9 and 11 and the meters now compare well with my Gossen Luna Pro.
karl
 
I have heard of doing the diode trick but since hearing aid batteries are pretty
cheap I have used them before in my old cameras..
 
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