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Free Minolta Uniomat and Ansco Anscoset rangefinders - both FREE

Trader history for spark (3)

spark

Subscriber
Joined
Jul 27, 2006
Messages
256
Location
SF Bay area,
Format
35mm
Time to clean some shelves and boxes of things I won’t be using. Offered FREE (except for postage), a Minolta Uniomat and Ansco Autoset rangefinders. The same camera, built by Minolta with different badges. Each features an f2.8/45mm Rokkor lens with a very nice and bright rangefinded.

These are selenium metered match-needle rangefinders from the early 1960’s. The exposure scale uses “Exposure Value” numbers which can make sense for some but may be confusing for beginners.

The Unionmat meter is off by 3 stops (set it for 800 when using 100 film) and the Autoset off by 1 ½ stops as compared to a Gossen Luna-Pro meter. Sounds bad but we’re talking about 60 year old selenium cells made before what a lot of what’s known about semiconductor fabrication was figured out.

Light seals are pretty much gone but look easy to replace. Each camera has a leather case, with the Uniomat showing some home repair. Take them both for the cost of shipping 3 lbs/ 1.5 kg
 

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With the viewfinder and lens capped, try leaving both cameras in a sunny window, without UV filtering, for a week or so, and then retest for improved readings.

Sometimes these old cells benefit from such exposure and I routinely give my Weston Master V meters this treatment, along with a few others, though these are in good shape and I've never seen a difference in my kit.

Two Master V meters had 'new' cells installed by Quality Metric's, George, in '06 and I hope never to be without them again.