Minolta Hi-Matic 9 Rangefinder

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RF'er

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Hi To All,

This my first post and it's a question about the shutter on this camera. There appears to be 2 sets of blades, 1-front, 1- rear. With the film door open, I can see the blades open and close when I fire the shutter. Howver, when I try to view this from the front of the lens, I see no blade movement at all. This is my first minolta RF. Is it possible there is an electronic problem or am I just missing something here?

HELP!! Thanks
 
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Sounds like your aperture blades could be gummed up, effectively leaving you with one aperture. IIRC this is a common problem with the Hi-Matics and other leaf-shutter AE cameras. I've owned two Hi-Matic 7s in the past and had this trouble with both of them.

You can clean the blades yourself with a few simple tools, some napthalene and patience. You might want to keep dry-firing the camera and see if the blades loosen on their own.

These Hi-Matics are under-rated performers when they're working properly. I always thought they were the equals of the highly touted Konica Auto S2 and Yashica GSN.
 
Thanks, Chris

How do I go about getting inside to clean the blades. Perhaps this should be addressed elsewhere in the forum.

Thom
 
I think you have to use a point spanner to unscrew the threaded lens cover in order to remove the front lens element. I've never done this myself on a Hi-matic, but I have done it on other cameras. It's fairly easy but you need to pay attention to what you're doing.

Other RFFers are much more knowledgeable than me when it comes to this type of repair. You might want to cross-post this in the repair forum, and search there for repair info.
 
Thanks Brian,

Tried your suggestion, got nothing. Is there some place I can send it to be cleaned? Or would that even be worth it?

Thom
 
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It is not very difficult to remove the front lens retaining ring, the plastic that keeps the meter in place, the front lens element and the shutter/aperture rings on the Hi-Matic 9. I cleaned mine for the exact same reasons.
However it seems i have not cleaned it properly since now i get blank frames and it does not open - again.
Strange thing is, it worked fine (excellent lens by the way!) until i attached a small flash unit and switched it on, mid-roll. From that moment, it does not open the shutter anymore. SHould not be related, but it's a strange coincidence.
 
Pherdinand said:
It is not very difficult to remove the front lens retaining ring, the plastic that keeps the meter in place, the front lens element and the shutter/aperture rings on the Hi-Matic 9. I cleaned mine for the exact same reasons.
However it seems i have not cleaned it properly since now i get blank frames and it does not open - again.
Strange thing is, it worked fine (excellent lens by the way!) until i attached a small flash unit and switched it on, mid-roll. From that moment, it does not open the shutter anymore. SHould not be related, but it's a strange coincidence.
Click to expand...

I had a similar experience. Interesting. The shutter does require juice to fire. It's possible that the electronics may not like some flash units. It was fine with an old Canon Speedlite, iirc, but then faulted after mounting a more powerful Zykkor which I used to use on a K1000.

I opened it up, checked the soldering and obvious things like that, didn't see anything wrong. I'll go back to it.... someday.... heh
 
all i know about this is pure acetone and a q-tip works well for this. if you are brave and can isolate the shutter, you can soak/spray more of the acetone on the blades. - at your own risk.
 
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