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Minolta's first SLR, the SR-2, was introduced at Master Photo Dealers and Finishers Association show in March 1959 in Philadelphia—the same show where the Canonflex and Nikon F were introduced. A cheaper SR-1 followed a few months later; obviously, they were planning the SR-1 when they decided to call the first one the SR-2. Then came the SR-3, and then the SR-7, which was the first SLR with a built-in CdS meter. Minolta claimed it was the first still camera with a CdS meter, but an obscure rangefinder, the Taron Marquis, beat them by a few months. The first Photomic finder for the Nikon F also seems to have come a bit earlier, but it wasn't built-in.

Who was actually first doesn't really matter. What did matter was that the meter was now small, not huge like the selenium cell it replaced. That meant that soon engineers would figure out how to put the meter inside the camera so it could read the light coming in through the lens.

The SR7 meter is coupled to the shutter-speed dial. When you turn the dial, a scale marked with f-stops that you view in a window on top slides back and forth and a needle indicates the recommended aperture, which you then set manually on the lens in the usual way. You don't see the needle in the viewfinder—just on top.

I bought my SR-7 on eBay for $20. It must have been listed by one of those dealers who buys stuff in estate sales, snaps quick photos, puts up the eBay listings, and moves on to whatever's next. Wiping a camera with a rag would slow things down. You can see the dirt on the eBay photo:

Believe it or not, this is the same camera pictured at the top and below! All I did was spend a half-hour or so cleaning it up with a micro-fiber cloth dampened with a little Windex. The self-timer handle was gone, but I was about to take one off of the SRT-201 I'm disassembling anyway, and it seemed to fit the SR-7 just fine.

When I got my SR-7, the meter was working (well, the needle was moving, at least), meaning that the battery was still OK. I didn't shoot any film, so I don't know how well the camera works, but from trying it out, my guess is that it works pretty well.

The SR-7 has a removable flash shoe on a bracket that goes over the prism housing, unfortunately leaving marks that you can see in the photos. The last photo, below, shows it back on.

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Click image to zoom

(Click on the photos to see them bigger.)

Here's a review from the April 1963 issue of Popular Photography:

This ad from the November 1962 issue of Popular Photography appeared on the upper and lower halves of two facing pages:

This ad is from the March 1963 issue:

Here's an ad for the SR-7 (and SR-1) from the March 1965 issue of Popular Photography:

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To read more about manual-focus Minolta SLRs, check out the Rokkor Files.