Restoring the grip on a Minolta 600Si Classic.

Kell

Kell

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Kell
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Putting this here as it might be useful advice for someone else.

Bought a cheap (£16) Minolta 600Si Classic.

It was cheap as it had no grip at all. There were one or two bits clinging on for dear life, but they were all really brittle.

At first, I looked online for a ‘parts’ camera but they were all more expensive than this one - which appears to work properly.

Plus, there is a huge chance that any other camera I bought would suffer from the same problem in the very near future.

So I had never heard of Sugru, but it seemed to be the answer in this case.

Bought a pack of three - it was nowhere near enough.

In the end I think I used 6 1/2 pieces.

So the Sugru easily cost more than the camera. But I could have got away with an eight pack if I’d bought that first.

Was originally going to try and make it smooth, but got the idea from a guy on Reddit to maybe include a texture.

In the end I used a piece of 60 grit sandpaper.

Not by any means perfect. But certainly better than it was.


IMG_0643.jpegIMG_0690.jpegIMG_0691.jpegIMG_0692.jpeg
 
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Great find and great work there Kell, I like the look of the 600SI, is it full button control? any pics of the back?
 
Barney said:
Great find and great work there Kell, I like the look of the 600SI, is it full button control? any pics of the back?
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I can get some - just trying to avoid picking it up until the Sugru goes off properly.

When that link I posted to the eBay seller came up there were several 500Si cameras and then this.

I asked ChatGPT what the deal was and it came back with something like “at a time when the market was moving to menus to control things, old-style shooters much preferred (and asked for) cameras with control on buttons and knobs.”

That’s basically what this is. And why they called it ‘Classic’.

According to the same chat, it’s massively underrated, but appreciated by people who’ve experienced one.

That sold me.
 
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Kell said:
According to the same chat, it’s massively underrated, but appreciated by people who’ve experienced one.

That sold me.
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I bought one back in 1995. My first AF SLR camera.

The 700si was seen as a more modern camera.

I chose the 600si because it was cheaper. I looked at the Canon EOS 50 SLR which was its contemporary. I preferred the controls on the 600si. But think in retrospect that Canon's AF system implementation was probably better by that time.

On the 600is you in effect reset the controls by turning all the dials to a designated position. it sounds trivially obvious - but at the time it felt useful (and safe).

There is depth of field preview which was not a common feature - and differentiated it as being an upper mid range model.

I'm not convinced the viewfinder was that good. I have seen it stated that it is a pentaprism but in retrospect I always felt it was dimmer and more like a pentamirror. I found it very hard to use the depth of field preview and I found manual focusing a struggle.
 
RyanB said:
Nicely done repair there Kell, the sandpaper worked well for a bit of grip/ texture.
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I think mainly because it's so difficult to get anything completely smooth, the texture is useful to hide the fact that there are probably some lumpy bits.

I did this in two parts (as I didn't buy enough to begin with) and the first layer was rubbish. I could not get it smooth.

Though I did then read that using soapy water prevents it sticking to other things and tat helped a lot. So, the second layer was better as I used the barrel of a sharpie to roll it flat - which was probably about 80% of the way there, then used the soapy water and a variety of completely unsuitable tools dipped in soapy water to smooth it out.

It was way better than the first layer, but I'm pleased I stumbled across that Reddit post about adding texture.
 
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Kell said:
I think mainly because it's so difficult to get anything completely smooth, the texture is useful to hide the fact that there are probably some lumpy bits.

I did this in two parts (as I didn't buy enough to begin with) and the first layer was rubbish. I could not get it smooth.

Though I did then read that using soapy water prevents it sticking to other things and tat helped a lot. So, the second layer was better as I used the barrel of a sharpie to roll it flat - which was probably about 80% of the way there, then used the soapy water and a variety of completely unsuitable tools dipped in soapy water to smooth it out.

It was way better than the first layer, but I'm pleased I stumbled across that Reddit post about adding texture.
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I reckon a potters kidney, i.e. one of those rubber kidney shaped tools potters use to smooth clay would be ideal for shaping this sort of material.
 
I've never heard of that before. Sounds like an affliction.

The sharpie was pretty successful as it was long enough (just) to bridge the gap between the two raised plastic bits of the original handle. So it could be used to keep it all in-line with those.

TBF though, any long enough straight piece of something would have done.
 
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