I've recently picked up two Minolta Hi-Matic 7SII based on their rep for being quite sharp. Then the other I picked up a very nice Olympus 35RC at a local store. Now I'm a devoted Minolta fan but the Olympus seems to be a bit more solidly built. And it's viewfinder is much brighter and easier to use. My only complaint is the tiny aperture ring that even my little hands had a hard time using. So, I decided to test the two camera against each other. I used ISO 400 film since I had two rolls of 12 exposure film I could waste on something like this. I used my lightmeter versus the in camera meters to insure proper exposure. I shot the same scene with each camera consecutively. I then scanned the images at the highest resolution possible and compared the untouched scanned image. Due to poor quality control at the Walmart lab about 1/2 the Minolta negs did not scan well (fingerprints & scratches). So, I only had a few shots to compare. In all cases the Minolta won in color, contrast, and sharpness. So, while it's much easier to focus the Olympus the Minolta will give you the better shot. I've attached (I hope)crops from both images.
