smonson

Hello, sorry about commenting on an old thread, but I can explain how the automatic mode on this camera works if anyone's still interested. It does set intermediate shutter and aperture values. The reason is the way the automatic mode works: as your finger presses the shutter release button down, the aperture slowly closes, and the shutter speed is reduced, by two cams. The moving mechanism that performs these actions is a lever beside the metering needle in the viewfinder. As it descends, the far end of the EV needle stops the motion of the mechanism (the needle is firmly held in place by friction at the first moment of pressing the button - maybe what @greg_nixon2 referred to as a "trap needle meter"?). At the moment when the mechanism touches the end of the needle, the motion stops, and the shutter speed and aperture value are frozen in that position until the shutter button reaches the bottom of its travel, and the shutter release triggers. So the two exposure settings are both continuously variable. It's a very ingenious mechanism and is a testament to the talent of Minolta's engineers. For the CLC - I think it may be a special CdS cell with two halves on the front, upper and lower. In the Himatic 7 when they weren't claiming "CLC" on the front, they had a totally different type of cell inside a glass tube of some sort.