r/AnalogRepair

Any idea what causes this misalignment in apature blades and if it's fixable?

Hiya - recently inherited an om-10 from my grandfather. Been sat in a cupboard for 10 years.

It works perfectly with new batteries however leave it an hour and the mirror is jammed up. Will sometimes release if the battery lid is fiddled with. Any advice please let me know

(Apologies for the shaky video)

Hi,

I acquired a nice Leotax (Leica Barnack copy) with Simlar 5cm f3.5 (Elmar copy). The camera is in overall good condition (curtain, working speeds, double image alignement). There is fungus in the viewfinder but not affecting usage. The lens doesn't seem to have fungus but quite a bit of scratching in the front element, and what looks like deposits from old lubricants on the internal elements.

Here are some sample shots of the lens as is placed in front of Nikon z7 +ftz (it fits almost perfectly against the ftz but there might be some light leaking) compared with modern lens. Sharpness seems quite good compared to the more modern lens, contrast feels definitely flat though with the feeling to have a faint veil.

Is this level of contrast what you would expect from a normal/good Elmar/Simlar ? Given the image quality, do you think it's worth doing a deep clean of the lens elements ? Perhaps polishing the front element ? Would the scratch free glass without coating provide better contrast and sharpness than coated with scratches ? I have CLA'ed my yashica mat before including lenses so not really afraid to do it again. I will probably at least do a basic clean to at least remove any residues.

The first finished device of OpenCurtainLab is finally ready to measure some cameras :D

Since the last time I posted about my project, many people shared their ideas and thoughts about this project. This helped me to improve the design to make it as professional as I can.

Now that version 1 it is finally working, I took some of my cameras and put them on the test rig. From working perfectly to spec like my Prakticas to deciding to expose somewhat in the right direction like my russian cameras. It showed me exactly how good all of their mechanics are.

The device has 5 phototransistors aligned diagonally as well as a flash sync connector. Together with a flashlight it measures the exact exposure reliably down to 1/2000 of a second. The polling rate of the sensors is about 6kHz.

From this data the WebUI is able to calculate everything from average exposure to curtain travel speeds and flash timing. The goal is to measure every camera setting a few times to see the overall condition of the camera.

You can read more about the project on my Github: https://github.com/benikum/OpenCurtainLab

I still have parts to make some more devices ready to use. Please make a private message if you are interested.

So I bought my first rangefinder camera and it is canon 7. Spent on it about 150$ and it came surprises of course))) long exposures were shitty and led to a jam, but I knew that it was like that and were buying this cam for restoration, but when I was cleaning it and lubricatin the slower I encountered a broken part of a prism in a rangefinder. So it was kinda split off or something. I noticed it when figured out that I can’t focus right, but I thought that a rangefinder need to adjust.

So i glued half of a prism with an epoxy to avoid any strange reflection while focusing. And then i was cleaning framework and there where something like baldes in the coating that I corrected with liquid leather.

Actually the one lens is with spoiled coating, but I tried to clean it how I could and lubed some

So what do you think about my purchase and repair?

Hello, we recently shot a couple rolls of film on an old Pentax from around 1980. I'm not sure of the exact model. We were trying not to get our hopes up as the camera hasn't been used in over 10 years. Anyway we got the scans back and nothing really turned out.

I'm wondering if anyone has any insight of what went wrong with the camera. I've been shooting digital for 20 years so I'm not too familiar with film. The analog camera mechanisms just seem so simple but I can't tell where it went wrong.

Thanks in advance!

I bought junk Olympus PEN EES-2 and found that red tongue and aperture blades didn’t work.#1 photo, it looked like attached well but barely and fell off when I touched it. Photo #2. I barely connected it now with soldering but it was hard to solder wire and selenium surface. I scratched surface a little bit and added some flux but not helped. Any another good way? Light meter and aperture blades are working now but someday soldered wite will be off again. Could you please let me know better way?

Hello friends of tiny screws and frustration tolerance,

EDIT: Deleted and reposted since a picture was not displaying right

here is finally the third and last update to the A-1 restoration project, my first experience with camera repair and CLA.

Part I
Part II

Last time I left you with the completed CLA and the lessons I learned along the way. This time I will address the two leftover tasks/problems:

1. The viewfinder display being extremely dim (almost invisible to the naked eye), and was missing the G segment on all the individual displays.
2. Since disassembling the camera implies pulling the leatherette, I wanted to re-leather the camera in a colour. After all the work done, I didn't want it to look like a stock A-1 :)

To start tackling the viewfinder display problem, I first resorted to the repair manual. The 7-segment miniature displays are controlled by a BCD decoder/driver IC, which in this case is a custom part from Canon. The only advice from the manual to change the brightness of the display is to modify a resistor, RIADJ, which configures the internal constant current source of the IC. Since this is a carbon resistor, I suspected (and hoped) that it had drifted upwards with age, but that was not the case. The resistor is an E96-series 3kOhm, and measured almost bang on. I also tested a 47uF decoupling tantalum capacitor that is right next to the IC, but the capacitance too was well withing tolerance. Bummer!

The BCD decoder IC also provides a trigger function for multiplexing not only the displays, but also several buttons and inputs to the camera. To prevent backcurrents during multiplexing, a large diode array is used. However, a failure of a diode in the array would not explain the missing G segment, since they control if a whole display lights up and not the individual segments, which is controlled by the BCD decoder itself. The probable cause would then be an output stage transistor in the IC not working.

Nevertheless, I wanted to experiment before I gave up with that intensity resistor. I replaced RIADJ with a 5k trimmer to vary the resistance and see how it affects the brightness. So, with a half-pressed shutter pushrod and a very uncomfortable position I looked through the viewfinder. Imagine how underwhelming it was to see absolutely nothing change when varying the resistance! This was enough to determine that the IC was at fault.

An interesting observation is that, when I tried the trimmer with the long cables I show in the picture, the camera acted weird. I tried firing the camera, but the curtains would hang often and randomly. Only after I shortened the wires it started acting normal again.

Luckily, the display unit is a flex PCB module which contains the display, the IC and the resistor and capacitor and can be easily exchanged. Although the module is mounted through press-fit connectors, desoldering some wires is necessary to remove it. I got a replacement module from eBay, which gave me a nice, bright display again, and a living G segment.

To crown this project, I decided to get some fake leather and make the camera look a bit different. I edited a picture of the camera to cut off the original leather and replaced it with pictures of different self-adhesive leathers I found online to see which one I liked the most. After bothering all of my friends for their opinion, I decided to go with a burgundy one I found in Amazon. It turned out to be quite thick (almost a mm), while the original leatherette of the A-1 is around 0.5mm thick. Nevertheless, I drew the cut template by scanning the original leatherette in a flatbed scanner and drew it in CAD. Then cut the leatherette with a laser cutter, painted the cut edges black with an edding and glued it on the camera. All in all it looks quite good, and the thickness difference is not that noticeable in my opinion.

Thank you for reading! It was a cool adventure. I am definitely hooked on camera repair now!

First of all thanks for this community, this is a great place for information and inspiration. Feel free to skip the first couple of paragraph for my issue.

I've recently got a Voigtländer Vito CL, made in West Germany, which I spent some time with. I managed to smooth out the sticky shutter- and aperture wheels and I set my zone focus by finding the infinity focus before reassembly.

After shooting my first B/W roll I got the prints back and while not expecting perfect results I was a little let down by the inconsistency with my zone focus. Some shots look great in focus while other are a blurry mess but I can not see any pattern with the blur. some long range shots are fine while others are blurry. Most, but a few, of the closer range shots are blurry. I shot at around 11-16 aperture which should be forgiving enough for my novice estimations of zone focus.

So I went back to the workbench and spent a Saturday tinkering with the focus element, I set up a test range of objects placed at 1-2-3-4 meters and I taped a piece of opaque plastic where the film would lay so I could test the focus at 2.8 aperture, not a perfect setup but I am no professional either.

Here is my situation:

* If I set the infinity focus on a building across town, objects at the far end (4m) seems fine but the closer the objects get, the more off the focus is, objects at 1m form the camera are in focus when indicator is on 1.6m
* If I set the focus to be crisp on the object by 1m, objects by 3m out are now not aligned to the indicators

It seems to me that I am able the get crisp focus but the range is smaller than expected and I can't wrap my head around how that could be. Is it possible that I am on the wrong thread when screwing in the focus element? The brass threads are sort of worn and it is not easy to find the thread, I tried three different positions before I found the current one which is the only one giving me any clear image at all.

I am new to analog cameras but I thoroughly enjoy tinkering with them, this might be a great new hobby.

Thankful for advice and input

I have a Canadian 50mm Summicron M v4 that has the all too common issue of a broken aperture plate. The plate is not metal and made of some kind of composite. It has broken fully through the hole and is missing a piece on the top. My plan is to glue the bottom section and try to fill in the top section. What glue would you use in this instance?

I bought a Minolta Hi-Matic 7sii 2 years ago. Never CLA'd it, but when I bought it it was in really good condition (well, the light meter has never woreed, but I'm happy doing sunny 16 and getting photos with the wrong exposure).

Recently, the aperture has stopped opening fully while shooting. This sounds like a stuck blades issue, but I don't think that's the case, because when I half press down the shutter button, it opens up the blades to nearly the right opening, before closing them again. On bulb mode, you can see that it really sticks to basically the same aperture no matter the f/stop I select. I don't even know how to properly describe this problem, so I'm struggling to get the right keywords to Google the problem. I've never taken apart or fixed a camera before, but I'm open to trying, particularly if it's a straight-forward or step-by-step fix (I don't want to be digging around in there exploring, I mean). [ETA: Based on the comments I will not try to fix this.]

I've attached a video to show what I mean. In the video, I start at f/16 and do a few half-presses before pressing the shutter button the whole way. I repeat for f/8, and finally f/1.7. You can see that the actual aperture at full-press increases between f/16 and f/8, but not between f/8 and f/1.7. During the half-presses, the aperture opens more between f/16 and f/8, and between f/8 and f/1.7.

What do you think? Is this a gunk issue, a broken part issue? Any suggestions for keywords I could search to learn how to fix this myself [ETA: I will not be trying to fix this]? Any fellow Minolta Hi-Matic owners experienced this problem?

Thank you, all!

So I bought this lens yesterday, I noticed the face plate is loose it rattles around as shown in the video. I also noticed there’s some scratches on the back glass which are a lot more visible when you shine a flashlight, and there’s a lot of dust on the inside but it appears fungus free. I bought it to flip but I still do want to use it a bit on my F1 before I move it on. So I wanted to ask the community, should I pay to get it CLA’d? And if I did would I see any gain in value? Or should I just sell it as is. I’m not sure if this candidate is a nice enough example to fetch the $2000+ CAD Price tags. At the very least I want to repair the loose face place prior to sale. And if I did want to pay for it to be repaired what should I look out for?

Hello! I got a cheap second hand Agfa Optima Flash which arrived today, though now that I’ve inspected the lens, it doesn’t look so good. I’m not super experienced with cameras though so any advice or suggestions would be super helpful!

First off, the outer glass looks really grotty and scratched up and has not cleaned off at all.
Secondly, I’ve heard a lot about these cameras having lens haze. Is that what’s happening here too?

Thanks in advance :-)

Hello everyone, I bought a beautiful bronica for not too expensive but I noticed that a piece is missing on the back of the case. Do you know where I can buy this piece? Does it even sell?

I'm feeling sick to my stomach. I went to shoot with my Hexar RF today and realized the diopter was missing. I re-traced my steps twice to see if I dropped it somewhere, but no luck. I doubt I'll find one fore sale anytime soon so the camera has become a paperweight. If anyone knows where I might possibly find one, I would be grateful.

Recently got a Nikon F3 but it's missing the rubber ring that goes around the shutter speed dial. Anyone know where I might find a replacement? Feel like I've looked everywhere.

Hi everyone,

I’m fixing an Olympus mju-ii and it’s completely missing the film pressure plate (part CG181400). Getting a donor camera is not an option for me right now.

I came up with a DIY solution and wanted to get your advice to see if this makes sense:

• Base: 0.33mm zinc plate (to maintain perfect flatness without bending over time).
• Surface: 0.13mm matte black PTFE (Teflon) tape applied to the film-facing side. This should provide extremely low friction for the weak mju-ii motor, prevent film scratches, and avoid light reflections.
• Total thickness: ~0.46mm, sitting directly on the original leaf springs.

Does this sound like a viable fix? Has anyone tried something similar? My main concern is cutting the tiny side tabs precisely using a utility knife (score and snap method) so they fit the plastic rails perfectly without jamming.

Any tips or critiques are highly appreciated!