Tales on Film

The Petri 7s is a coupled rangefinder camera made in Japan. There are 2 versions of this camera, I have the one with the 2.8 lens and shutter times ranging from b – 1/500. The camera has a built-in light meter, but only takes film up to 400 asa. The light meter is a selenium type around the lens, it’s not battery powered, which is good. But selenium doesn’t last forever, it is bound to expire after 30-50 years being exposed to light.

I got my Petri at a local flea market for a bargain price of 3 euro. When I purchased it, it had some dirt stuck under the aperture ring, which made that I couldn’t use the 2.8 f-stop. After cleaning that, the camera recently broke down with a shutter that won’t fire anymore. I tried to fix it myself but that didn’t work out so well. So now it’s just sitting in the collection until either I can fix it or I find somebody who can.

After the 7s broke down, I started looking for another one and found the Petri 7s II. Which is basically the same camera as the 7s, but has a dark plastic ring around the lens instead of the metal one on the 7s. Also the coldshoe on top of the 7s has been upgraded to a hotshoe on the 7s II. On this camera the meter is accurate in clear light, but definitely not working once it becomes darker. But that’s not a big problem, at least it has a meter and now that I know this, I mostly verify the light conditions with my iPhone

I like the rangefinder system and the metering in the petri, because it enables you to take a picture rather fast without using autofocus.