I Rescued A Disregarded Minolta X-7A From A Street Vendor

I was waiting for my wife at the pavement where my RS125 was parked earlier this morning. She was buying some veggies in the market.

I have been standing there for a couple of minutes while watching vehicles and passersby. Then I noticed a street vendor selling mixed stuff like old and used shoes, bags, toys, electronic gadgets and anything they think can be sold. This is common here in our place although street vendor like this are prohibited by the city government.

Whenever I see people like this I tend to check at the things they are selling. I know how hard it is to earn a living for this type of people so I buy at least. My family has had this kind of hard life during my childhood so I know how it feels.

I saw this Minolta SLR standing in one corner and it caught my attention right away. Just to be clear with you first that I am not a photographer and I don’t know about cameras.  However I am kind of a techy guy so I am familiar with some mechanical and electronic parts of a camera.

I asked the old woman about the price and she replied to me straight. “The camera is 1K (1000Php).” You know sometimes street vendors like these are a little pricey when selling used stuff because they really don’t know the condition of the things they offer. For sure the camera is already broken so I asked her politely if I can see and check the camera and she responded yes.

As I held the camera, I immediately noticed the liquid thing dried out all over the casing. I suspected it was glue because it is how it appears to be. I thought that there might be cracks on it so someone might have glued it. Minolta X-7A as it clearly shows as the brand name. I never owned SLR before and even now I don’t own DSLR because I only got interested in photography lately.

We had a film camera back then, you know a cheap one for capturing moments on every occasion. You need to be smart enough in handling such things because if you don't, you might ruin all the photos being captured by camera. What I mean is you might accidentally press rewind or open the back cover thus exposing the film to light and destroys the entire roll of film.

Anyway, going back to the Minolta X-7A, I tried to ask the old woman if she could lower the price to 500Php ($10) at least then I will buy it. I don’t know where the camera comes from. It could be that it came from the dumpsite, lost or stolen stuff. So there is no way they can sell it as high as $20. The price I was offering was more than enough for a broken camera and could save their meal for that day. Then the old woman said to the kid beside her to text his father and ask if he would go with the price I bargained for. In less than a minute there was a reply to the kid's message and said he was okay with the price, then I immediately handed 500Php bill. She then wraps the camera with the plastic bag and hands it over.

A little later my wife came and I showed her the camera. She just said it was beautiful although she doesn’t know if it’s broken or not.

Since it’s my free time today, I spent the rest of my day reviving the Minolta X-7A. I am not so familiar with this so Google and YouTube helped me out.

According to camera-wiki.org, Minolta X-7A is a 35mm film camera, manual focus SLR released by Minolta in 1985. So this guy here is already 37 years old.

After a few hours of cleaning, checking and testing while watching videos and other information on the internet, here is our guy now.

I was able to revive it although I have yet to test it with film. It is working perfectly as it should be.

Unfortunately, the camera flash didn’t make it because the thing that was supposed to be a dried out liquid was coming from the batteries of the flash. The juices come out and flow all over the components inside and all throughout the lens, thus, building up corrosions and even makes the casing fragile.

As you can see in the viewfinder there are red LED lights, meaning it is turned on and ready to take a shot.

The red light in front on the left side indicates the timer for automatic shots.

You might raise your eyebrows because it may appear to make no sense of buying a film camera these days because it’s obsolete. This thing here is already a thrash. But why did I buy it?

I have my own personal reason. Firstly I consider this one as a treasure already. Imagine how this camera has been within 37 years. I bought it as a personal collection too and for studying parts and functions of SLR as well.

I wanted to learn photography and I think it is pretty important to learn first its functions with manual operations. I also think the Minolta X-7A is kind of helpful for me as a beginner. After all, digital single-lens reflex cameras (DSLR) originated from analog cameras - the SLR.

What can you say about this Minolta X-7A SLR? Share in the comments below.