Me and Photography (part 5) MINOX - the Miniature Marvel

In the mid70s my camera-bag grew heavy with two Minoltas, several lenses, filters, close-up lenses, a flash unit and other accessories. I realized that I could not walk around like a beast of burden for the rest of my life just to be prepared for hastily upcoming photographic situations. For some time I had longed for a small and capable camera which could unobtrusively remain dormant in my pant pocket until needed. The answer came from the former Latvian company MINOX, by then firmly rooted in Germany.

A tough competitor to the Minox

Another German manufacturer, Rollei, already had a very attractive small camera for 35mm film, receiving much praise in the press. I had held it in my hands a few times and certainly felt fetishistically drawn to it. But some things bothered me. The Rollei 35 had rather sharp edges and was still a bit too bulky and heavy for what I had in mind.

When I saw the Minox 35 EL for the first time in Germany in 1976, it was love on first sight. Minox was a brand of considerable repute. They were the leading company for miniature cameras in a ”stick” format, featured e.g. in countless spy movies. However, the stick cameras used a dedicated miniature film, really impressive, but not capable of an image quality rivalling the 35 mm ”Kleinbild”-film used by the Single Lens Reflex cameras so popular at the time. The 35 EL was Minox' first camera for the film format used by all the market leaders, Leica, Canon, Nikon, Pentax.

Ad for a Minox "spy"-camera

Naturally, even a love on first sight, ignited in front of a store window, had to be put to a test. But it took no more than venturing inside the store and handle the camera to convince me. The Minox with its fibreglass body was light, it was small and it had pleasantly rounded corners. It slipped into a pocket in the way I had longed for: chances were good you soon forgot it was there.

On that day nothing else was needed for me to immediately proceed with the purchase, without actually having too firm a grip on all the ins and outs of this little camera.

Luckily, the camera turned out to be quite convincing, technically: True, focusing distance had to be guessed at and adjusted manually on the lens barrel, there was no focusing aid. That was a bit hard to swallow after some years with microprisms and split-image rangefinders in the SLRs. Fortunately there was a fair error margin for your guess. Since the Minox lens was a moderate wide-angle of 35 mm focal length, the innate depth of field – especially at smaller apertures - comfortably accomodated slight misjudgements of subject distance (but not the more blatant ones!)

The exposure metering was automatic. It was responsive to the aperture you manually selected. This feature was very appealing to SLR users: It gave you control over the relation between shutter speed and aperture. So even with this little marvel you could master depth of field and at the same time reign over the possibilities and/or dangers of the ensuing shutter speeds. Or vice versa, depending of your own priorities.

But what about deliberate over- and underexposure? Even moderately advanced SLR-users had learned that overrides were essential in many lighting situations, especially with slide photography. And by the mid 70s many SLR-cameras featured an override dial between +2 to -2 f-stops. This was the case on my Minolta XE-7. Well, that featuere wasn't found on the 35 EL Minox. But there was a workaround of sorts: the ISO (= then called ASA) dial for film sensitivity could be temporarily tampered with to effect an over- or underexposure. The catch though was not to forget to immediately return to the correct setting, lest all ensuing pictures followed suit being over- or underexposed, according to your dial modification!

The Minox in action

The Minox became a very important camera for me and almost never stayed home. The lens was high quality and the images impeccable. In slide shows the shots taken with the Minox could be mixed with SLR slides without any noticable difference in image quality.
The Minox' aperture mechanism was a bit crude, no more than two blades formed the various openings. It didn't make a great ”bokeh”, but this is not a major issue with a wide angle lens.

After about a year's use a slight problem surfaced. Closing the front panel made the lens recede into the body. It didn't travel completely straight, at one point the lens dipped somewhat. That was probably the moment when some light seepage could occur. Mostly it just blackened one little section on the film's perforation. So that was nothing to worry about. As time went by though, the occasions where the light intrusion caused an image deterioration became more frequent. I was able to prevent this in most cases by opening and closing the camera in the greatest ”lightlessness” available at the time and place.

Minox 35 GT (ca. 1980)

Eventually I bought the succeeding model, the Minox 35 GT. There were very few changes, but one improvement I had good use of was the ASA (=ISO) dial's gradation. Film sensitivity could now be selected in smaller steps. For me that meant I could fine-tune my deliberate over- and underexposure in steps of 1/3 f-stop. And light leakage never occurred. Great.

Both Minox models had the amazing ability to get exposure time correct in night scenes and in other poor lighting situations. The camera's manual talked about full function up to 30 seconds exposure, but I recall instances where the shutter stayed open even longer and it got it right! Of course a tripod was necessary for this type of picture. But sometimes I succeeded even with placing the camera on a table or pressing it against something firm. There was no risk whatsoever for camera shake caused by the shutter mechanism, which also was extremely quiet.

In the late 90's the Minox was repeatedly the only camera I took along on week-long packsack holidays, giving in to the temptation to avoid the bulk and weight of SLRs.

My two-pronged photographic approach with Minolta SLRs and the Minox compact was a concept that I remained true to for nearly 25 years, as incredible as it sounds. The last few years it was paralleled by the developing digital cameras, which were much fun to use, but could not around the year 2000 produce high-quality pictures (at least not in affordable consumer models).

The following three pictures can illustrate how the Minox excelled in certain areas. Keep in mind that this reflects a time period long before even smaller digital cameras and smartphones appeared on the scene...

While shopping in downtown Hamburg once, I witnessed a police action that became very unpleasent. A totally helpless drunk (or drugged) person was taken in with unnecessary rudeness. Some bystanders started to react, one with a regular size camera was told to leave the scene. My Minox went unnoticed.

Taking pictures during indoor-concerts was usually not tolerated, especially not when highly visible and audible SLRs were the tool in this "crime". And firing a flash was a ticket to be hauled off the premises by guards.
In this instance I slowely worked my way down to the stage. I was empty handed and nobody reacted. The Minox in my pocket was loaded with highly sensitive film, so no flash was needed.  And the camera didn't have one built-in. So no risk for an accidental flash. Calmly I took the Minox out and was able to take a few pictures of Leonard Cohen in concert (Gothenburg 1979).

A good number of backpack trips, usually about a week long, took me and a friend to various places in Europe during the 80s and 90s. Sometimes for serious hiking with tent and all, sometimes for pleasant day hikes intermixed with city life and evenings at restaurants and pubs. Carrying much camera gear was out of the question by that time. City and pub life was perfect for the Minox. For nature and landscape shots the fixed 35 mm wideangle lens felt a bit restrictive at times. But as with many limitations, there comes a benefit with fewer choices. It made it easier for you to concentrate on the remaining options. Often these images turned out well, like this scenery from the Gower peninsula in Wales.