Petri 7

The Petri 7 is a fixed-lens 35mm rangefinder camera made by Petri/Kuribayashi in 1961. In style, it closely resembles the Canonet of the same year, but is somewhat more basic in its features. It has a coated 45mm lens, available as an f/2.8 or f/1.8, and a leaf shutter, giving speeds from 1 to 1/500 second, plus 'B'. This is synchronised for flash, with a switch on the lens barrel to select between X and M synchronisation. There is also a PC socket on the lens barrel, and a cold shoe. The shutter release button is threaded for a cable release. The manual claims the release needs only very light pressure, helping to avoid camera shake.

The camera has a selenium meter, with the sensor arranged as a ring around the front of the lens (Petri call this arrangement the Circle-Eye), and with the meter reading shown in the viewfinder as a match-needle display. The rangefinder is combined with the viewfinder, and is tinted green by a glass filter over the RF spot window. The RF has a rather short baseline (i.e. the VF and RF windows are rather close together). Petri called the VF and RF the Green-o-Matic system. The viewfinder itself is somewhat tinted, to avoid eye-strain, according to the manual. There is also a brightline frame in the viewfinder; unlike the Canonet, this does not move to give automatic parallax correction.

Film advance is by a lever on the top plate (again unlike the Canonet, which has a folding trigger-lever on the bottom). There is a double-exposure prevention interlock, which cannot be overridden. There is a frame counter. Rewind is by a folding crank, with a rewind-release button in the base.

Kuribayashi's distictive red-spot badge, with a sinuous S and small bold K (on, for example, the earlier Petri 35 and other small rangefinders) is replaced with a much less bold logo.