I've long wanted to get my hands on an Autocord, and apparently I'm not alone. I spent about a month on ebay trying to pick one of these up, but kept getting outbid, and usually by only a few bucks! Finally I got tired of that game, so I cheated with a sniper program to get my hands on this near flawless example for a reasonable price. The Autocords were manufactured from the mid 50's to the late 60's. Minolta had an annoying habit of making minor changes every year and calling it a new camera (but still simply named Autocord). Between 1955 and 1966 at least seventeen different autocords were sold. Based on what I could find online at ( http://www.wctatel.net/web/crye/a-cord.htm), I have an Autocord RG, 3rd version which was introduced in 1963.
The Autocords are extremely high quality cameras, many people say they are very close to the famous Rolleiflex, but were sold at a lower price to those who couldn't afford Rollei's pro TLR's. The pricing still holds today, I certainly can't afford a Rollei at this point of my life, but an Autocord was within reach. It's very well made, and feels better in my hands that the popular Yashica 124G, although the focusing was a bit stiff.
Winter 2011/2012 has been pretty mild, so when it actually started to snow over the weekend I grabbed the camera and headed to Germantown Metro Park. Even though the snow was really coming down at times it was still to warm for it to stick around once it hit the ground.
Germantown Metro ParkKodak Porta 400MarchMinolta AutocordTetenal C41filmhighwayroadsignsnowstormwinterMinoltaAutocord009
One of the first things I do after scanning film is to start removing dust spots, which show up as little white dots. When I was touching up the shots on this roll I kept thinking to myself, how could I have left so much dust on the negatives? It was at this point that I remembered that it was snowing that day. Oops.
Germantown Metro ParkKodak Porta 400MarchMinolta AutocordTetenal C41filmsignsnowtrailwinterMinoltaAutocord008
It was a quiet day, Germantown park is a little bit farther away from Dayton, so it is never very busy.
Germantown Metro ParkKodak Porta 400MarchMinolta AutocordTetenal C41fencefilmsnowwinterMinoltaAutocord017
March 2012
Kodak Portra 400 developed with the Tetenal C-41 Press KitGermantown Metro ParkKodak Porta 400MarchMinolta AutocordTetenal C41filmwinterwoodxMinoltaAutocord016Edit
