Last month a guy brought in a Canon with a busted hot shoe. Everyone in the forum kept saying to replace the whole top cover assembly for $80 in parts. I told him to wait, cleaned the contacts with a pencil eraser, and bent the spring pin back with tweezers. It worked fine and cost him nothing. Has anyone else noticed folks jumping to swap parts instead of trying the simple fixes first?
Had a dilemma on a 1971 Spotmatic - use a third party light meter or hunt down a vintage CDS cell from a donor body. Picked the original route and spent $18 on eBay for a parts camera. Thing meters perfectly now after calibrating it with my iPhone app. Any other tips for finding specific old parts without getting ripped off?
Happened last month during a wedding shoot in Portland - the mirror foam had turned to sticky goo and grabbed the mirror. Has anyone else dealt with this on old SLRs using a quicker fix than full foam replacement?
I was at the Photographic Historical Society show in Arlington Heights last fall and an old repair guy showed me how he uses a dental pick to align shutter blades instead of tweezers. He said tweezers put too much pressure and can bend the tiny pins, and I have to admit it's been way easier on the Copal shutters I work on. Has anyone else found a weird tool that just works better for specific repairs?
I see a lot of posts here saying to use a swab and fluid on a sticky mirror in a Pentax ME Super, but last week a customer brought one in that was wrecked from that exact method. The coating started delaminating right where they scrubbed. Has anyone else had better luck just using a blower and hoping for the best first?
Had a day last fall where three different Pentax Spotmatics came in, all with the sticky shutter issue on the same horizontal curtain. First one I figured was a fluke. Second one made me check my calendar. Third one I just stared at for a minute. All from different owners in the same week, all delivered within a two hour window. I still don't know if there was a bad batch of lubricant floating around or what. Anyone else seen a weird cluster like that?
I was working on a Nikon F2 last Tuesday in my shop (a converted shed, honestly) and had the shutter curtain all lined up and ready to go. I reached for my tweezers - the good brass ones - and knocked the whole drum off the bench. It hit the concrete floor and that coiled spring just went everywhere, like a metal snake. I spent the next 45 minutes on my knees with a headlamp and a magnet finding each little spring coil under the workbench and in the dust bunnies. Managed to get it all back together, but the tension was way off and I had to start over from scratch anyway. Has anyone else found a trick for keeping those tiny parts from launching into orbit? I'm thinking about getting one of those magnetic parts trays.
Had coffee with this guy named Frank who used to work at the Leica factory in Wetzlar back in the 80s. He told me most cloth shutters fail not from age but from people storing cameras with the shutter cocked for decades. I asked him how many he'd seen and he said hundreds at his old shop in Chicago alone. Has anyone else heard that or is it just an old tech's pet theory?
I used to think freeze spray was the only way to find bad solder joints on old circuit boards. Then I tried a Hakko FR-301 desoldering gun on a Canon AE-1 mirror box last month and saw how fast hot air revealed cracked joints without the condensation mess. The freeze stuff just made things wet and risky near the shutter mechanism. Anyone else switch methods after a specific repair?
I was shooting a wedding in a small chapel outside Portland last summer when my trusty Canon F-1's shutter just stuck halfway through the ceremony. I had to pull out my beat-up backup, but it was loaded with Tri-X instead of the Portra 400 I needed for the low light. Managed to salvage the day by pushing the film two stops in development, but I still feel that moment of panic when I think about it. Anyone else had a camera fail at the worst possible time?
I was talking to my buddy Dave who does plumbing repairs over beers last weekend. He was going on about how he never uses rubbing alcohol on certain seals because it dries them out and makes them brittle. It hit me that I've been using isopropyl alcohol way too aggressively on old lens elements and their retaining rings. Those felt rings and foam spacers inside vintage lenses can't be happy getting soaked in the stuff either. Now I'm thinking about switching to a lighter solvent like naphtha for the delicate stuff and only using alcohol on the glass itself. Has anyone else here messed up a lens by being too heavy handed with cleaning chemicals?
I picked up a Nikon F2 that had a shutter capping at 1/1000th. Thought it would be an easy clean and lube job, maybe two hours tops. Five hours later, I had the mirror box apart three times, still couldn't get consistent speeds. My buddy says anything over three hours on one issue means you're chasing ghosts. But I've also had repairs where I pushed through the eighth hour and finally found a bent gear tooth. Where's the line for you all? Do you set a hard time limit or just keep going until you find the problem?
He pulled out a wooden toothpick from his shirt pocket and cleared a stuck blade in under 30 seconds while I was sweating over the same issue for an hour. Anyone else got a tool they swear by that sounds totally ridiculous?
I used to always blast dust off sensors with canned air before a wet clean. Then last month I had a Nikon D750 come in where the canned air left a residue all over the low pass filter. Took me 3 tries with swabs and solution to get it off. That one job convinced me to just go straight to sensor swabs instead.
Bought one of those cheap stainless steel spanners last month thinking it'd be fine for adjusting a stuck focus ring. Thing slipped on the second try and gouged the brass trim ring pretty bad. Now I'm out the cost of the lens plus the wrench. Anyone else had luck with a specific brand that actually holds the pins steady?
Had a Minolta X-700 with years of foam rot stuck to the mirror box. Tried alcohol, lighter fluid, nothing worked fast. Pulled out my cheap heat gun, medium setting, 30 seconds of heat. That glue came off like soft butter. No scratching the paint underneath. Anyone else use heat for stubborn foam cleanup?
I was digging through a dusty shelf at a Value Village last weekend and spotted a Pentax Spotmatic for $15. The meter needle was stuck and the shutter sounded sluggish on the slow speeds, but the lens was clean. I grabbed it hoping I could get it working again after work shifts. Has anyone here brought one of these back to life with just a CLA and new light seals?
Been shooting and fixing TLRs for about 12 years now and I always leaned toward the Mamiya because of the interchangeable lenses. But fixing up that Yashica for a customer in Portland made me remember how much smoother the winding mechanism feels on the older ones. The Mamiya has better features on paper but that Yashica just feels right. Anyone else find themselves liking a simpler camera over a more advanced one?
I had this guy come into my workbench last week with a Nikon F2 that had a stuck mirror. He wanted a quote upfront before I even touched it. I told him I could give a rough ballpark but not exact until I opened it up. He got annoyed and said another repairer in Austin always gives a fixed price over the phone. I see both sides because one wrong estimate can lose you money or scare off a customer. But I also feel like diagnosing first saves headaches later when you find extra issues inside. What do you all do when someone pushes for a hard number before you've seen the full problem?
I was at a used camera store in Portland last year and watched a guy fix a jammed shutter on a Nikon F2 with just a toothpick and steady hands, no fancy tools. It made me realize I'd been overcomplicating things by buying expensive jigs for years, but he claimed cheap tools work fine if you know the mechanism. Do you think using basic tools is smarter in the long run, or do they risk damaging the gear more than dedicated repair gear?
Used to spend $8 a can on that dust-off stuff and go through 3 cans a week cleaning sensor dust and mirror boxes. Finally bought a little 2 gallon compressor from Harbor Freight for $45 last year, best move I made. The canned air would leave residue sometimes and I swear it made my fingers cold as hell. Now I just blast everything with dry air from the tank, no chemicals touching anything. Anyone else ditch the cans or am I the only one who got sick of wasting money?
I was digging through some old repair logs last week and counted that out of 30 Rolex 1030 movements I've worked on in the last 2 years, 18 had broken balance staffs. Found that stat in my own notebook at the shop in Portland. Has anyone else noticed this being a common issue with that specific caliber?
I was in a shop last week in Cleveland and this guy who's been repairing cameras since the 80s said he never wets his sensor, just uses a rocket blower and calls it good. Meanwhile online I see people doing these full wet clean kits with swabs and solution after every few swaps. I get that dry is safer for not ruining coatings, but what about the sticky stuff that won't blow off? He had a point about oil spots though - said most of the time it's from cheap lubricants inside the camera, not dust. So is dry-only a legit long-term approach, or are we just kicking the can down the road? Has anyone else had a sensor get permanently stained from skipping wet cleaning?
I was just counting up my repair logs from the last 6 years and realized I crossed 500 shutter fixes. That number surprised me because I still remember my first one, an old Pentax Spotmatic that took me 3 hours just to get the timing right. Most of those came from a single camera shop in Portland that sends me their backlog. Has anyone else kept track of a specific repair milestone that snuck up on you?
I was cleaning a beat up Canon AE-1 last weekend and noticed it always jammed right around frame 13. Turns out the foam bumper on the pressure plate had turned into sticky goo and was catching the film sprockets. Has anyone else run into this with older foam parts breaking down in specific cameras?