Monday, August 20, 2012

Voigtlander Vito Automatic I

I believe this camera was made in 1964 according to a sticker I found inside the camera.
It is a trap needle type auto exposure camera using a selenium meter. It also has manual shutter selectin and I am not sure yet how it will work as the meter is not working.

This is the very first time I saw this camera and first attempt on this repairs.

The shutter speeds are erratic and meter is not working at all.
The shutter just needed cleaning for the slow speeds.  I have no repair manual for this camera and I have to study how it is made for disassembly. Late on I will try to make a manual on how to repair this camera.


 For the meter, I have to take the finder section apart to get to the galvanometer.

Here the galvanometer is separated from the meter trap mechanism.

I found the problem. The magnet was unglued from the upper plate from old age. The trouble was putting it back because the magnet will stick to the wall :)


After some trials and errors, I put the magnet back in the center and I used the crazy glue :) because  it is instant. 

Here the meter has been return to the finder assembly. I did not have to take out the finder but it is too late now. I put some white paint at the bottom and glue it back.

I still do not know if the meter works or not and crossing my fingers.

Also, film rewind knob was not suppose to disassemble but I did it and put it back :)

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Ansco Regent with Compur MXV

I took apart the Compur MXV shutter that is used on Ansco Regent. It had grease all over the shutter.
My repair manual said not to work on the aperture leaves. They were right. It had 11 aperture leaves. They are just too many but not as many as Canon Serenar lens I worked on one time. That one had 13 leaves and took me half a day to put them back. I will never work on the Serenar lens again :) 11 leaves on this Compur shutter was not so bad. The trouble was the grease on the slow speeds and the self timer. I had degreased them many times but failed to clean them. I gave up fixing on this camera.

I know one repair place told me they will remove the aperture leaves on the shutters with too many aperture leaves. I will not tell you which repair shop :) You have to make sure you have to count how many leaves are on your shutter and when it comes back :)




Pentacon 50mm f1.8 Screw Mount Lens


Pentacon 50mm f1.8 was used on Praktica MTL series of SLR cameras. I used to repair these cameras for a repair shop long time ago.
MTL's weak spot was the shutter wind ribbon and the plastic meter gears used for the meter movement.
The shutter ribbon has adjustment but even if you set at shortest length, the shutter still did not charge. They used to supply different lengths of this charge ribbon ( made of spring metal.)
I did not like to work on these models as they usually stopped working right after the repair was done and usually I had to re-work on the camera at least two times.
The lens, however, was excellent.






UV Topcor 58mm f2.0 Aperture Leaves Cleaning



UV Topcor 58mm f2.0 was made by Tokyo Kogaku for its Topcon Uni and Auto 100  SLR cameras.
Topcon Uni and Auto 100 has leaf shutter and its main selling point at that time was that you can use the flash all the way up to 1/500 seconds. It had different interchangeable lenses.
You can buy this camera cheap now but most of them are broken. the weak point was the shutter cocking cam post. It break off and shutter no longer winds. Also, the prism goes black from the deteriorated sponge used in the prism. I have made a downloadable pdf instruction manual on how to do aperture cleaning on this lens.

 
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