Win Some, Lose Some

No book/writing update really, a bit of potential source material has arrived, and about the only source material in print for that matter! But I still need to see a man about…well it’s not a dog, though the one he’s working on does look ruff at the minute 🙂

It can be something of a lottery buying old film cameras and lenses online and obviously unseen, especially lenses. Worse still I suppose, is when you buy something you’ve seen before handing over money for it, even though it has issues.

On the flip side, there’s nothing like getting a bargain. And overall in the last couple of weeks, I think you could say I lost a game in overtime; IYKYK.

In non-hockey terms, one good camera and a lens, one definitely duff camera and lousy lens, another lens that’s sadly not repairable (by me anyway) plus a compact camera that looks like it works, but I’m not 100% sure of yet.

The camera bought knowing it had issues was an Olympus OM-1. Bodily fine aside from peeling leatherette, but the shutter was decidedly stuck and there was corrosion in the pentaprism.

It didn’t take long to get it apart and find a mess inside. Apart from the usual disintegrated foam in the film chamber, taking the top off revealed more of it, and in a worse state, around the mount for the hot shoe. Apparently, later in their production run, Olympus stopped putting the foam in around the pentaprism, quite possibly for this reason, I can’t see why it’s needed there anyway.

The foam isn’t too hard to remove, but the corrosion in the pentaprism is a different matter completely, short of finding another pentaprism.

As for the stuck shutter, it seems to be a fairly common issue caused by the self-timer mechanism. If this doesn’t complete winding down, it locks the shutter mechanism in some sort of limbo. With adequate instructions, I might be able to do something with it, but as it stands, the OM-1 is a paperweight.

Meanwhile, the standard Zuiko 50mm lens that came with it had a hefty dose of fungus. But supposedly, these aren’t too bad to take apart and there’s a decent Youtube video of how to dismantle them.

Which would be great, if after getting the lens mount off and access to the rear lens assembly, it would actually unscrew, preferably without having to resort to using mole grips! Sorry, not worth the effort, there’s plenty around and I already have a good example: BIN!

You’ll be able to read about my almost wholly successful purchase, once I’ve run a film through it. And yes, another Yashica has joined the clan.

I say almost wholly successful purchase, as the lens that came alongside a Yashica 35-70, was an 80-200 Super Paragon zoom lens with macro function, and one reason I decided to buy the camera. Unfortunately it also came with fungus.

As for the steamed up bathroom window look you can see behind it, no idea! It’s like someone tried wiping steam off one of the middle lens elements with a cloth, but missed most of it.

Lens fungus, regardless of old manual focus lenses or vastly more recent digital ones is more common than you might think, and zoom lenses are especially prone to it.

The zooming mechanism moves the air inside the lens as well as the glass elements and acts a bit like a pump. Its how you get dust in lenses as well, but in amongst the dust can be spores. If you don’t store your lenses with silica bags to absorb moisture, and you keep them in a nice warm room for an extended period of time, nature does the rest.

Use your camera gear on a regular basis and get plenty of nice sunshine and UV light into the lens, you reduce the odds of fungus. Store with silica desiccant and somewhere with a dry atmosphere, but cool, the odds improve again.

Some people have the skills needed to dismantle lenses and restore them. Sadly I don’t and neither do I have the specialist tools to take them apart either. Given the prices for similar old lenses, it’s not worth me buying the tools.

Finally, yet another Yashica camera arrived, but not an SLR, a 35mm auto-focus compact. There was going to be a full page in Compact Diaries to go with it, and there still might be! But at the minute, it’s not behaving quite as I expected, or probably it should.

It also seems to drain the battery VERY quickly, maybe in trying to charge the flash which doesn’t work but you can’t turn off. With the batteries at £10 a pop, I can see the camera heading for the WEEE recycling in a hurry if it doesn’t behave.

I said I’d lost in overtime.