So the other day I was given three Pentax ME Supers (135 SLRs from the late ’70s). I got them from a friend, also a photographer, who got them from his neighbour. He passed them on because they are all broken.
This is both gratifying and annoying, because as much as I like free stuff, I dislike my weakness in accepting it knowing that I will spend the rest of my waking hours making futile attempts to repair it that will only end in the item’s destruction and/or my attaining severe injury.
So despite my misgivings three Pentaxes have joined the growing pile of broken or otherwise-usless junk that is threatening to develop sentient intelligence and devour house-guests.
Lord knows I don’t need them. I already have a Nikon SLR system, and a Canon FD one as well for when I feel like slumming it with mid-’80s tele-zooms – and they’re fighting for the attention my Bronica’s been stealing.
My broken/useless pile already holds, and these are just some examples, a FED-3 rangefinder (capping shutter and mis-aligned rangefinder), a Polaroid Colorpack II (can’t afford packfilm for it), a Weston Master II light meter (just stopped working), and a Nikon MD-12 motor drive that spends more time on strike than the French. And that’s not counting the pair of Sennheiser radio-microphones I picked up at an op-shop (thrift store, for you Yanks) the other day for $1.50.
Now I have a page open in another window on disassembling the ME Super and bits of Pentax spread all over my desk – or I would if I could get past all the seized screws.
The first task, the cap that covered the retaining nut on the advance crank, was meant to come off with the aid of a rubber lens tool, but actually required pliers. It was easy going for a few more minutes, then I came to another retaining nut that required even bigger and grippier pliers. Now I’m up to the screws on the top plate and try as I might one of them is just not bloody budging.
So then pushed them aside and started on the light meter, only to be blocked by the world’s smallest hex-head bolts. Now I’m looking up information on disassembling the MD-12, and already somebody’s offered me a jammed Minolta X7.
Why must this happen? Why is all this lovely old gear allowed to get old and broken?
Why can’t I resist it?
My new ME Supers. The on the left has a broken wind lock (it continuously winds) and a shutter than thinks it's always in bulb, the black one is missing a shutter button and has a jammed mode selector, and the one on the right is just plain jammed.
The Workshop.
Comments
hehe…i know what you feel like. although i’m not at all gifted with repairing camera gear i have so much half-broken stuff lying around here. i just cannot bring myself to throw it away.
Same here! I got a Belomo Vilia through the post ages ago (linky) and the shutter was really sticky, it probably only fired every 15 shutter clicks! I got another posted to me from the russian ebay seller, and this time the shutter lever was broken…argh!
I decided to try and make one ‘working’ camera out of both of them, but it went horribly wrong. As soon as I opened one of the cameras, loads of screws and springs flew everywhere, I then proceeded to deeply slice my finger on a sharp bit of metal inside the camera, which needed stitched up. I threw the camera in the trash during a fit of bloody rage
I still have the non-working shutter villia, but scared of opening it again!
You sir, are braver than me!
mildly interesting but not a lot to do with holga…
hi brian,
thanks for the comment.
Holgablog does have a lot of holga-related content, however we have assembled a team of writers who have a wide range of expertise in all-things-photography, and feel it would be a shame to limit ourselves to one ‘brand’ of camera. We named the blog ‘holgablog’ partly because that domain name was available and memorable
There’s a bit more info on our ‘about’ page:
http://www.holgablog.com/about/
hope that helps
Its good to take them apart just to see how they are built and work but a bit annoying if they don’t like to be stripped.
At good tip for overcoming seized screws: drop all the camera bits into a bin from a great height and close the lid.
Thanks everybody. Brian: I hope Andrew’s reply addresses your issue.
As an update, I was able to dejam the mode selector on the black body and find it a replacement shutter button, so it’s going perfectly now. The one with the winding issue seems to be happy most of the time as well now, but seems to have the occasional relapse.
I’ve given up temporarily on the third one, and to be honest I’ll probably come back in six months and just salvage parts like the focus screen from it.
But that’s alright because I’ve now got a Zorki-2 with a mis-timed shutter to occupy me.
you should find a way to make some income from this weakness.