Unobstructed View

@Jen: You might find it fun to just have a go at cleaning and oiling it yourself. And if you wouldn't, I know you have some young men around the house who might like a chance to take something apart and (hopefully) put it back together again. Next week I'm expecting a package with a dozen old "junk" cameras to arrive. I bought them on an auction and if I manage to get one or two of them functioning again it will be well worth the little bit of money I paid for the whole lot. The two ancient rangefinders I've been posting from recently were very inexpensive. I paid under $50 for the Ricoh. It needed to have the lens wiped down inside and out with a lens tissue on the end of a q-tip. I paid about $8 for the Konica. All it needed was a roll of film.

You may find that a tiny drop of machine oil on the tip of a toothpick applied to the moving parts of the film transport and maybe a wiping of the film rail and pressure back will put your Minolta back in order again.