The Repair shop

I'll be honest this is just a page dedicated to gear based gore...

Yashica 44LM:

This poor old camera is kind of an odd one. It shoots 127 or 4x4 negatives which is smaller than the usual 6x6 negatives that was much more common for medium format cameras. These days 127 film is somewhat rare, but you can pretty easily adapt this camera to shoot regular 35mm film open gate over its sprockets and rebate which is fun. Personally I've always wanted one because I think they're dumb, and I love that.

This one is in vaguely worse for wear condition, having probably been a shelf queen for the last 40 years. I wasn't that worried though, as I knew these cameras were about as complicated as an A4 piece of paper.

Surprisingly upon arrival its leaf shutter was working, if not maybe a little slowly. This something that effects all leaf shutters over their life time just from oils hardening and dust build up, and isn't that hard to fix at all. Aside from that the only real issue was how filthy the camera was.

I stripped down its face plate and disassembled the front of its shutter to access the clockwork beneath. I blew as much old rubbish out of the mechanism as I could, and gave it and the shutter and aperture blades a a quick cleaning with isopropyl alcohol. This very quickly freed up the shutter to an acceptable condition. I cleaned every surface I could get access to and put it back together to test. The only issues left now being the crumbling paint and missing leatherette which I will address another day.

With the help of the 11 year old son of one my colleagues, we tested the camera with a roll Ilford black and white film, as well as tried out these ridiculous tele-converter add on lenses from a different camera on it. Seeing somebody so young running around having fun trying easily the dorkiest camera I've ever seen was a huge pleasure, and a highlight of my photographic year.

Inside an Olympus OM-1:

This is a camera I received by surprise in a box of other lenses. It worked but was rough around the edges and in dire need of an internal clean. I removed its top plate to get access to its pentaprism to clean mould that was growing over it. While I was there I was able to clean off some old degrading foam that was being used to hold the prism in place which is notorious for causing issues with the glass coatings over time. And gave me access to some of the light meter electronics to see if I could find an obvious reason why it wasn't working which there unfortunately wasn't.

I reassembled and tested the camera which was to nobodies surprise working perfectly, now with a cleaner viewfinder.

I've since sent this camera on to a friend in wellington for him to enjoy.

Pentax ME Super Fail:

I brought a Pentax ME Super for $15 for fun a while ago with the hopes of getting it back working. These tend to be great cameras with one flaw that winds up with them being sold for scrap. There's this little rubber washer that was used on a linkage between the shutter and mirror actuator that love to denaturing and sticking the mechanism together. Sometimes the fix is easy, sometimes you need to removing the entire mirror box to get access which is what I ended up doing. The repair was successful, but sadly once I fixed that other issues started rising. Even stupid things like the film door randomly opening while I was trying to test it. For now the camera lives in limbo waiting for me to try again, but I think its ready to fight me on it's resurrection from retirement.

The Olympus SC - The rarest camera I own!

Only its not rare because its good haha. These were an interim model between two very abundant cameras Olympus made in the 60's. I was interested in it for its unique 42mm f1.8 lens, a focal length very close to the field of view of our eye making it an uncommon but fantastic "normal" lens. The camera came to me needing a bit of love. The shutter was a little slow on its longer speeds- a very common symptom of a sticky slow speed escapement, which is luckily very easy to fix. The controls also felt like they were filed with a mix of chocolate and sawdust which I wouldn't mind cleaning out while I was there. Despite not being able to find a manual on this rare camera, I tore straight into it knowing full well this was the second simplest camera I owned.

Sure enough with-in an hour I had the camera back to a fully functional state and went out shooting through the ruins in Eskvally on a roll of cheap but great fomapan 100.

Olympus Pen D:

Olympus Pen's are a cute and sought after little camera model which are known to be some of the best half frame cameras money could buy. Half frame was a vaguely short lived format, that was used to double the amount of photos you could take on a conventional roll of 35mm film... from 24 to 48, or 36 to 74 frames. They do this by cutting the frame in half and shooting across 35mm film width ways kind of like how a Super 35 cinema camera would. For photography it does mean you're trading quantity for quality though. Either way when I saw one listed as broken on TradeMe for $50, I figured what's the harm.

Turns out the shutter had completely fallen apart, owing to what I suspect was a shoddy repair job by somebody else in its past. This meant I had to completely disassemble and rebuild the shutter from scratch. This isn't a job I'd recommend for the faint of heart, but luckily everything from around this era was made by engineers who took pride in their contraptions being fixable. After an hour of following a manual, it was all back together and working again.

This little camera is so much fun to use. This specific D model is fully kitted with a 32mm f1.9 standard lens (about a 50mm equivalent on a regular 35mm camera) and full exposure control. This means it looks completely like a toy, but feels and functions like a beast- a true pocket rocket. Some of these photos are taken in bulb mode for up to 40 minutes to take full advantage of this cameras ridiculous abilities. Note some light leaks I've since fixed.

I used this camera to do early trichrome tests. Trichome photography is where you use 3 frames of black and white film and red, green and blue colour filters to stitch together a colour photo in photoshop. I also tested false colour infrared trichromes while I was there...

Canon P:

Canon P's were part of Canon's first push into the camera market. Like all the popular Japanese camera brands today (aside from Panasonic), Canon built themselves a name by copying and soon innovating upon the blueprints of early Leica camera bodies and lenses that had been opened to the market as reparations after WWII. The P was one of the last range finders Canon built before SLR's took over a couple years later.

This one needed a bit of love with its viewfinder frame lines having come unstuck at some point, and its slow speed escapement dragging a little on longer exposures. As my first proper attempt at a camera repair I cautiously had it completely working with-in a few weeks.

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