Halina A1 Reflex Assessment

Received the Halina today and on assessment I’m a tad disappointed but have learnt a valuable lesson. I purchased on line and it seems the positives have been promoted and the negatives omitted completely.

Positives:

• It’s all there
• The case is in great condition for its age
• Leather strap is original
• Aperture lever and aperture mechanism works
• Viewfinder is good (needs a clean)
• Cassette box is fine
• No dents and dinks

Negatives:

• It smells horribly dank, I suspect it hasn’t spent time in a cupboard, probably in a loft space
• Hence the lens has signs of fungal occurrence
• The original skin is peeling off
• The shutter is not working
• Light seal has rotted all around

Now I payed over the odds for this, to be fair I purchased it from a charity hospice so I don’t begrudge the outlay due to the cracking work that they do. It’s just I have learnt to ask more questions and don’t take the auction description as gospel….lesson learned.

Looking on the bright side all the negatives can soon be turned to positives, it’s going to require some work on parts I’ve never worked on before but isn’t this the best way to learn? On a low cost item that’s not going to impact anyone in any way, and at the end I should have a perfectly usable camera to either keep or move on.

So. What am I going to do? This unit is quite easy to dismantle as it has screws and not rivets, a positive in my eyes so I will dismantle the unit completely, service, clean and reassemble. But first I’m going to leave the whole package out in the fresh air on a window seal for a week or two to let the sun get to the lens so I can probably stop the fungus spreading further, and hopefully I can stop the stale smell getting worse. I will look at refreshing the leather to help here. Cleaning through all stages will hopefully help to ensure this.

I’ve decided to replace the light seal and lubricate all the moving parts, I’m going to replace all the leather with a snazzy red snakeskin leatherette to breathe new life into this old girl.

I’m looking forward to getting this one working, I’ve got the film to run through it, I now just need the time to get the work done, and this is going to take a little time to achieve, I currently have so many cameras to work on I’ve got to stop buying more 😂

And that’s harder than you’d think…..