XE-7 Made a lasting impression

[casualcollector]

A friend of mine bought one of these when he was in the service back in the 70s. I was very impressed with the look, feel and operation. Been keeping my eyes open for one at a reasonable price for about ten years. It turned up on the local Craigslist a couple of weeks ago. I picked it up in a nice kit of goodies yesterday.



The camera didn't work when I first installed fresh batteries. A little scrubbing of the battery cap and inside contact has fixed it. Next... a roll of film!

[SidW]

My favourite for a few decades until I started looking for autofocus. I understand it was done jointly by Leitz and Minolta, before Leitz did their own SLR

[kodaker]

I have one that I bought back when it was new. I loved using this camera. It's smooth action lets you know that Leica had a hand in it.

[truls]

It's almost a Leica copy, it also has the "Judas" window to display aperture values. A VERY nice camera, more reasonable priced than the Leica counterpart. And Minolta lenses are great.

[Mark Vaughan]

These XE Minoltas were truly a cut-above the rest. I liken them to Nikkormat in terms fo quality. When I as collecting Minolta's, all of my XE's eventually developed the same problem: the winder would seem to "stick" and not be albe to advance the film properly without fiddling with it. I found it interesting that all of my XE's had the same issue!

It boiled down to a lubricant failure, believe it or not. If your winder sticks, simply remove the camera's bottom plate and cycle the winder and shutter release while watching the mechanism in the lower part of the camera. It will become apparent that a small catch lever is the culprit. The 40 year old lubricant devolves into a sticky glue-like crud over time. Clean with alcohol, then re-apply LockTite brand "Super Lube" (TriFlow - common to bicycle applications is also a good choice - use very little though).

Voila. I then had three rather perfect XE's! An XE5, an XE7, and a rarer Japanese market XEb.

Good luck with it,
Mark

[casualcollector]

With fresh batteries and cleaned contacts the camera seems to work fine. I'll take a closer look at the light seals and get a roll of film into it.

Truls, I can see why you call the XE a Leica copy. Or... is the R-3 a Minolta copy??

Mark, I agree with you. A step up in "feel" compared to the SRTs. I'll file away your advice on the wind mechanism for future use, if necessary.


I tend to lump the Minolta XE, Nikkormat/Nikon EL and Canon EF into one category. Very nice early experiments in electronic control of a camera. Very different from what came before but rather quickly succeeded by newer models.

[Mark Vaughan]

It's my understanding that the R-3 and XE were jointly developed - Leica built the mechanicals and Minolta provided the electronics (or, was it the other way around?).

Either way, the more I think about it, the more I miss my large Minolta/Rokkor collection...!