photographic – Page 3

Werra 1 stripdown and rebuild

I recently purchased this camera and wrote about it in a previous blog entry Werra 1

I’ve commenced taking the Werra to pieces. The winder was not working and the shutter was not firing. Before starting this work I’ve viewed this page at Everything Vintage where they have recently carried out a full strip down of the Werra and you can view the page HERE, it’s all great advice.

Getting below the top plate was relatively easy exposing the mechanics from 58 years ago, I don’t think it’s ever been opened in all this time. I always love to see the ingenuity that went into these old cameras in years gone by.

The internals look dirty in the photo but to be truthful I don’t think the lighting is doing it any justice, yep there is a fine oxidation coating but it’s at a very acceptable level considering its age. When I get to the point of dismantling as much as I can, I will start to clean and lubricate these pieces. But at the moment my goal is getting to the shutter.

Werra winding system – shutter not working

In the video above I’ve managed to get the shutter cocking using the lens ring, however the shutter actuator does work intermittently, but there is no movement of the shutter (Or is there…)

The only reason I ask the question above is that after reading the “Everything Vintage” link in the first paragraph it appears there is a second shutter that closes the light path to the film back when you wind on. When you are ready to expose the film this shutter opens and then there is a second shutter that controls the exposure. if you watch the small video above I think it is this shutter you can hear when I wind the camera on. Hopefully this one is working, I just need to get the one on the rear working, and for this I need to remove the lens from the housing. To do this I need a tool I don’t currently have but have now ordered. More to follow when the lens ring removal tool arrives.

The lens ring spanner has arrived, the ring is being right stubborn at the moment and Im struggling to release it from its 58 years of rigidity. I’m tired as well and don’t want to cause any damage to the shutter so I’ll come back to this later.

18 hrs later, I’m rested and have another go at releasing that lens ring, this time I’m successful and I manage to release it. Sometimes it’s better to sleep on a problem and approach it with fresh eyes rather than continuing whilst tired and prone to making mistakes.

With the lens off the body, the shutter cassette can now be removed. It amazes me just how intricate this cassette is and the workmanship that must have gone into it. I’d estimate at least 10 small cogs and a number of tiny springs with levers and pivot points, amazing really considering it’s about 60 years old. It’s amazing how modern technology has advanced.

It takes some time getting into the shutter cassette as there are springs and things flying off everywhere, you really do have to photograph everything you do just to be able to check what goes where and how.

Inside mechanism – where is that spring from?

The shutter itself is rather clean apart from some fingerprints on the shutter leaves that must have been from years ago. I have cleaned this down with IPA and then used some finely ground carbon (pencil lead) as a dry lubricant and this has got the shutter moving just fine.

Werra shutter after being lubricated with carbon

I’m now starting to reassemble the lens and shutter as I’m happy that there is nothing else restricting the shutter and it is now moving quite freely. I will clean the camera as I progress and put some watch lubricant on the mechanics that are external to the lens and shutter assembly.

Well it’s all been reassembled and is now back in one piece. It looks good, the shutter works fine and I’ve now vacuum packed it to go back into storage. I won’t be firing up a roll of film on it yet as I don’t have the time to did so at the moment. I’ll probably save that until the summertime when the weather is more favourable. I’ve really enjoyed this restoration even though at times it was very frustrating. This rebuild has taught me patience, or at least that I need to have more patience and just take my time. Intricate jobs on such old equipment need a clear head and a lot of concentration. I’ve learned my lesson and will endeavour to remedy that situation in my future dealings with such equipment.

1986

What were your parents doing at your age?

When my parents were at my current age it would have been 1986. They were probably doing their best to just get by, and they both had multiple jobs. I remember a few details from this period as there were some significant goings on around this time.

My mother would have been a shop worker in a local store as well as a cleaner at the company i worked for. I would have been in the photographic industry about four years at this time, i would have had a darkroom in the spare bedroom and would have probably been on my third computer at this point. I’d have ditched the Sinclair ZX81 and the Commodore Vic 20 and I’d probably be trying to master the Amstrad CPC464. I loved the start of the computer era, as did a lot of my friends at the time.

I had my first SLR camera around this time and that would have probably been a Praktika. I was saving as much as i could, to try and purchase my all time favourite camera at the time, and in fact it is still my favourite of all time to this very day. A jet black Canon A1.

I know that i was heavily into photography at This time, as i took one of the most iconic photos i have ever taken in my family history, of my father. I have it to this day. He was leaning on a coal bunker in the garden, it was a beautiful sunny day and i took it, and processed the film and enlarged the photos in my little darkroom in the spare bedroom, on a Gnome enlarger. It was a black and white photo and it represented a turning point in all of our lives.

He had just had a heart attack, and he suffered a deep immersive depression that he never really came out of. Please don’t misunderstand me he lived for another 21 years with no other medical issues, however he had changed and became highly abusive to my mum, my little sister and me. He was heavily into alcohol at this stage, and we were paying the price. I had to grow up quick as i became the protector of my Mother and sister, it was hard and i was not prepared. We were the only ones at home at the time as my two elder brothers and elder sister had all left at that point, and boy how we suffered big time. Our lives were changed the very day his heart attack occurred.

He was a very good electrician, he had been an aircraft electrician but was now working for a local building company, he was also a part time baker.

In the next few years my mother would lose all her brothers and sisters as time took its toll. Father would lose his mother and sister and the family began to dwindle in size.

But thats enough of the bad as its all in the past and though i never forget what happened, i have to move on with my own life for purposes of maintaining sanity.

I loved the 80”s as the world was opening up and starting to develop technologically, however i do believe the older generations did struggle. It’s strange really as it is a mirror image for us older generations today, with some of the things that are going on around us currently. Perhaps all generations have their own Groundhog Day periods.

Here are some points of interest that also occurred back in 1986

Plans were announced between the UK and France to build the channel tunnel
The space shuttle Challenger exploded just after its launch
Halley’s Comet makes a show
The Soviet Mir space station is launched
Microsoft goes on the stock market
The Chernobyl nuclear plant explodes
Argentina wins the World Cup
The M25 motorway – The UK’s biggest car park opens officially

A lot happened that year and these are just a small selection of them. However the dynamics of my family changed that year and what occurred from that point on will never be forgotten . WordPress really couldn’t have chosen a worse time line to talk about for me than this one I’m afraid, but then, it’s good to get it out there.

However, time moves on, wounds heal and we all learn. This is why it is important that we don’t erase our past, otherwise how will we ever learn to be better people and treat others with the mutual respect and belonging they all so rightly deserve.

Have a lovely day, everyone.

Old Photos

What makes you feel nostalgic?

Probably the one thing that makes me most nostalgic is viewing old photographs. Not the many thousand you have on your phones (Though many are relevant), I mean the many thousands you have stashed away in boxes, in loft spaces and under beds. Those pictures that go back generations sometimes.

Black and white, Polaroid many different formats, all forming a pleasant picture of how it used to be. Times were simpler, I know we had a lot more Illnesses and afflictions back then, but we were amongst the last generations that actually went out and had proper “play time” and were able to venture every where, oh how times have changed.

When I look at the old photos the first thing I do is turn the picture over and see what paper it’s printed on, having worked in the paper and film production process at Kodak for many years, I often have a wry smile to myself recognising where the paper was probably made. And in those old days you very often had date stamps on the back that would allow you to instantly age a photograph.

The photographs usually come out when someone stumbles on them, that rare occasion, or when you stumble across them when spring cleaning.

It’s one of those little treasures you know are there, but your mind forgets them until it decides to surprise you yet again sometime in the near future.

Have a great day.

Release Your Inner Ansel Adams With The Shitty Camera Challenge

Loved this post regarding the reuse and repurposing of old cameras. I know its social media based, but you can’t have it all your own way. I’ve got about 70 candidates that could quite easily be adapted for this purpose…

Social media microblogging has brought us many annoying things, but some of the good things that have come to us through its seductive scrolling are …
Release Your Inner Ansel Adams With The Shitty Camera Challenge

CHEF!

What alternative career paths have you considered or are interested in?

From an early age I always wanted to be a chef. Don’t know why, I wasn’t influenced by anyone in particular and my mum, bless her wasn’t a gifted cook but she always kept us well fed. Maybe that was why then!

Anyway that never occurred, as when you get older your choices increase and your preferences change. I was always good with my hands and as an exceptional student in Art, Technical drawing and metalwork I was being edged towards a career in engineering. I took all my entrance exams and interviews to work at Rolls Royce aero engines at Leavesden, however my school were two days late in submitting my course work so that option became a non starter.

I ventured into photographic production, maintenance and lab work and remained there for about ten years ending up as a freelancer.

Then I ventured onto the railway where thirty two years later I’m still employed.

So it’s Been a greatly varied career, however the next move I make is intended to be my best career move yet….

Retirement !

Have a good day

A couple of pictures of our dogs

Again today we’ve been going through a whole raft of photos and we’ve chosen this one to sit alongside Alfie’s ashes. It’s a lovely photo of him with his head on the first stair, looking up at us getting ready as we’d told him he was about to go “Walkies” it sums him up perfectly. Beautiful boy 🥰

The second one we received as an anniversary present from my sister in Lancashire. It’s a lovely hand drawn pencil picture by a talented young lady of all our three boys. Bottom Left is Muffin who we had at the start of our marriage 33 years ago, bottom right is Digger who was next, and on the top with his trademark cocked head is our little Alfie. This is the only picture my wife wants on the wall of the boys as it is the three of them together.

What memories we have, and thousands of pictures to look back on and smile. We were so privileged to be gifted these three wonderful little souls. We have been so fortunate and lucky.

Smile today, make someone’s day.

Weir-y

Taken whilst attending a wedding in Darwen Lancashire.

Sunnyhurst brook has some lovely weirs on the stretch near the olde kiosk. However like many rivers in the Uk its water is brown and lifeless. A shame as it is a beautiful feature and would look glorious if it had a restored habitat.

Such a shame.

Taken on an iPhone 14 Pro Max

Vintage Photographic manuals

I’ve just obtained a bunch of photo manuals for cameras and related photography items from the last 40 years or so. Close to 80 of them.

Now I know these aren’t repairable items keeping in harmony with this site, however they are popular, and I just happen to have a few of these cameras available. What I’m thinking is that these manuals would be a nice little addition when I sell on said cameras to the unsuspecting world. It’s just that little bit extra that just could swing a sale.

The ones I have left I can just sell on as they seem to attract a reasonable price on line. Either way, I’m keeping them out of landfill and that is one of the purposes of this site.

I may even be able to make some kind of collage back drop with them or use some old photos as an alternative skin on one of my old cameras. Something arty-farty you know.

Listing them all online is going to take an age. Maybe I could ask the wife to assist in this matter. Now that will cost me a handbag at least.

Canon EOS 5D MK2 assessment and repair

Last Updated: 25/4/24

This will be a running repair with regular updates. There is quite a bit going on.

The bargain basement DSLR has arrived (See original blog post here: Canon EOS 5D Mk2) and I’ve been able to give it a quick once over. It’s not had an easy life and has taken some bangs and knocks. Other than that it’s about 16 years old and has had about 69000 actuations, I don’t think it looks too bad personally. I’ve spent a good hour just giving it a good clean up and it was filthy, all knobs and buttons are working fine, the shutter isn’t locked and when a lens is attached, manually it all focuses just fine and the screen looks clean. There is no evidence of damage to the curtain however I can’t test this further until the battery and charger arrives.

To be honest if I can get this working it will be going into my own personal collection. As long as I can get some nice results I’m not that worried about how it looks cosmetically. The body can be touched up or I can add a skin, we’ll see how it goes.

Update: 6/4/24

I’ve now received a couple of bits consisting of two new batteries and a charger as well as a new battery door cover. Once powered up all indications, buttons, sensors are working and TTL indications are displaying as they should.

All lenses are working and moving and focusing as they should. The real good news is that the shutter fires at all speeds and is not stuck, and the sensor cleaner appears to be working.

I’m really happy with what I have found so far, I need to get a CF card to check the original issues that were reported with the suspect sensor. If that is the only issue I will get one ordered and install that at a later date. I have cleared all settings and the firmware is up to date. I’ve downloaded a raft of Canon software so I will be able to test this all once I get that CF card that should be here in a few days.

23/4/24

The CF card adapter has arrived from China. I’ve purchased this type as this particular adapter allows an SD card to be utilised in CF form. I have ample SD cards in use all around so this makes sense for me, I have nothing apart from this camera that uses CF cards so for a relatively low outlay this is the best option for me.

Now I have Every thing in place to test the camera. I’m using basic settings and an old test lens so I’m not looking for any spectacular photos as that’s not going to happen here. I just want to see what’s going on.

What happens most of the time

When I’m taking a shot everything lights up ok. Indications are all good, the shutter fires but all I see is a pinkish screen as demonstrated in the small video above. However every now and again I do get a “proper” photo, usually only the one then you have to turn the camera off then on again to get another and that’s not always guaranteed. As you will see in the two photos below you can get one photo and then the next has a pink band appearing from above.

Whilst taking a random photo looking at our ceiling, I became aware of what looked like a water leak by the chimney stack. This gave me some concern but I needn’t have been worried as it appears in other photos and is more than likely an Abberation mark on the sensor. The two pictures below show that mark on the sensor in the same area.

Occasionally the pink line that appears at the top of the photo also takes on a pixelated test card look. The weird thing is that if you put the camera into video mode the image is clear with good sound and no playback issues. Strange 🤷‍♂️

It really is looking as if the issue is around the sensor that in this camera is a CMOS sensor. But before I make any decisions on what action I’m taking I’m exhausting all the obvious issues if I can. I have looked at several forums on line and there are a multitude of tasks I could try but it all seems to filter down to two in general. A full camera reset and a reinstall of the last issued firmware.

Now I have completed the full reset and on top of this I’m going to install a new CR1616 CMOS cell, as I just don’t know when this was last done.

The CMOS deterioration rate is about 3% of the battery value per year, now if this camera was purchased around 2008 when they first came out then it dosen’t take a mathematical genius to work out that the cell could be sufficiently depleted. In fact I don’t know why I haven’t used the multi meter to test it🤦‍♂️

I’ll get on to that and will report back. It kind of makes sense seeing the sensor on this camera is a Cmos sensor. All tested, battery was at 2.3v, I have now replaced the battery but everything is still the same. I don’t know if updating the firmware will assist in any way, but I’m just following a procedure that most who have been in this position before have also done. it’s just a process of elimination before doing a full tear down of the camera. And if I can do anything to avoid that I certainly will.

I’ve finished all the testing and it is certainly looking like the Cmos sensor needs replacing. I’ve done all I can here, but I’m reluctant to order the new sensor from China as I’m not 100% confident of having the facilities or time to do the work required. Will I gain anything after the outlay? I very much doubt it. I’m going to move this camera on now with all my findings and hopefully I can find someone who will be able to take this project on to a successful completion.

I know parts wise I can make a good profit on the original outlay so maybe that is the route to take.

So I’ve failed on this renovation, but nothing is going to waste, it just needs to go to some who is somewhat more experienced with these type of upgrades than me. Hopefully I can gain some experience along the cheaper more available stock route.

I have learned some interesting things about this camera and it’s operating. So in many ways that’s a win, knowledge is everything.

More Camera statistics

Back in March 2023 in the early days of this site I threw some figures out there regarding the amount of cameras on the planet up to and including 2022, you can read that post here: Vintage Camera figures

In this post I’m going show a graph and some figures regarding the decline of DSLR ( Digital Single Lens Reflex ) in the last 12 yrs.

It’s becoming obvious that people are ditching the traditional camera frame for the mobile phone and tablet approach and the figures you see in decline for traditional cameras have probably gone in the total reverse and multiplied many times over for the latter. It hurts the brain to realise the total amount of picture capture devices out there, as well as the waste that this produces as a result of what has become a throwaway society in which we all must share some guilt.

I can honestly state that in the last 12 months I have purchased close to 60 Cameras, 18 radios about 14 portable cd and tape players and not one of them has been disposed of much to my wife’s displeasure. (To be honest she’s very supportive of what I do as it keeps me out of mischief.)

Anyway I’m starting to drift a bit, so in my last post back in 23 I think I stated that there were estimated in 2022 to be something like 45 Billion photo capture devices on the planet, enough for 5.5 units per person that inhabits this Ball floating in space, a phenomenal number. And now there are probably even more.

The traditional camera is being ditched though and as you can see in this graph supplied by Statista It is a seriously declining part of the consumer market.

The number of digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera shipments worldwide has been on a downhill ride since 2012. In 2023, a total of around 1.18 million DSLR cameras were shipped by *CIPA companies all over the world. Despite the decline in shipments, the average price of digital cameras per unit has continued to remain stable.

In eleven years the annual sales of a DSLR has dropped by almost 16 million units in 2012 to a paltry 1.18 million in 2023, as I’ve stated the sales of mobile devices have probably quadrupled and risen in the opposite direction.

The question is, are traditional cameras going to be more of an antiquity in the near future or will there always be a demand? There are so many out there that I can’t see them commanding any good price through rarity as there are just so many out there.

I learnt my trade in photography back in the late 70s early 80s. Back then we did everything by hand from mixing the chemicals, manually printing using enlargers and various types of papers, dryers and drums. Dodging and shading, manually touching up any defects as work was produced. We even made dupe trans, did letrasetting and made the boss man tea. A computer does it all now….apart from the tea but I bet that’s on the horizon.

The chemicals we mixed were in 100 litre batches and were pure poison. E6 Colour developer contained Hydroquinone, and the final bath (Stabiliser) all this chemical was pure formaldehyde, we never had masks or gloves back then and after mixing a batch of these chemicals you were out in the yard for a good half hour coughing your guts up. There were many other chemicals involving ammonia and powdered citric acid and these were just a few of what we used. If you could only imaging the shear hell we went through for you to get your photographs.

Probably why I have such bad Bronchitis and Asthma nearly 45 years on.

What I’m saying is the digital world of today is immense progression and removes all that danger away from the business. It’s killed the business as much as any other big business out there. But it’s probably not as much fun or as much pleasure as doing the whole process by hand using traditional skills. Heck I bet that will kick start a conversation between the traditionalists and modernists.

Whatever way we look at things, time moves on, progression is always going to occur and we must (Even though we don’t always want to) adapt to change. And it’s going to change for everyone big time in the next decade or so.

Even though it’s like saying goodbye for a final time to a dear old friend. I enjoyed my role I played in it.

Supplementary notes

*CIPA stands for “Camera & Imaging Products Association”, which is the trade association of the Japanese photo industry.

The section “digital cameras” includes the following producers: Olympus, Casio, Canon, Kodak, Sanyo Electric, Sigma, Seiko Epson, Sony, Tomy, Nikon, Panasonic, Fujifilm, Hoya, Ricoh.

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Last Updated: 25/4/24

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