I got a Minolta Semi that was in desperate need of love, and fixed up the shutter, lens and bellows. The film counter does not stop on the indexed frame, which it is apparently supposed to. But the counter numbers do advance properly, so I figured it couldn't be worse than similar cameras (e.g. Voigtlander Brilliant).
The developed film showed there is still a light leak that will need to be tracked down, but there was also significant frame overlap. The Minolta does not use an indexing roller (a la the Medalist) so it relies on "just the right" rotation of the winding knob. This is inherently problematic, as witnessed by the Super Ikonta 532 which only gets 11 frames using this method. Obviously, a thinner film/paper stack would exacerbate the problem.
Has anyone ever verified that "newer" films are thinner than their predecessors? Somewhere I think there is an old roll sitting around. If I can dig it up, I'll break out the mic and check. If this were the case, it should be apparent on 620 spools, where a "new" film would not come to the edge of the spool flange.
The developed film showed there is still a light leak that will need to be tracked down, but there was also significant frame overlap. The Minolta does not use an indexing roller (a la the Medalist) so it relies on "just the right" rotation of the winding knob. This is inherently problematic, as witnessed by the Super Ikonta 532 which only gets 11 frames using this method. Obviously, a thinner film/paper stack would exacerbate the problem.
Has anyone ever verified that "newer" films are thinner than their predecessors? Somewhere I think there is an old roll sitting around. If I can dig it up, I'll break out the mic and check. If this were the case, it should be apparent on 620 spools, where a "new" film would not come to the edge of the spool flange.
