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Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Year end review

These two last months, cameras arrived... per kilo! First, mid-November a 15kg parcel from Ukraine sent by our friend Irina, containing 16 bodies, among which 7 Kiev, just to gently start the collection of Eastern Contax. And early December, a parcel from England containing 28 bodies "for parts", mostly Zenits E and EM and Prakticas, and also some Japanese without much interest.
Most Zenit and Praktica proved to be serviceable.
The most common problem with Zenit comes from the old grease that cakes at the shutter axles; a little disassembly, a little cleaning, a few drops of oil at the right place, and it restarts like a new one. Thus I revised in a few evenings a dozen Zenit E and a beautiful "Olympic" EM. I also enjoyed rebuilding the shutter of another EM (replacing the drum): to spice up the difficulty, I did not take any mark at disassembly, just to find by myself the right place for curtains. If you're not a handyman, you cannot imagine the pleasure I took!
On Prakticas, there were essentially shutters jammed in different positions; incredible how it is easy to fix: the parts put themselves back together during disassembly, only remains to close again and cleanly stick back the dressing! The record: the MTL 5, which unjammed during the unscrewing of the cocking lever! total, only two MTL 3 were laid out cold (but if you know my site, you'll know that I was not greatly saddened!).
So here I am, including the cameras found by the brother in secondhand fairs, with 9 screwmount Prakticas more in the collection for this last quarter of 2009. For someone who does not like screwmount Prakticas...
Record of the past three months, forty cameras have been added to my site (and the entire collection is not there), with fifteen lenses and some accessories.

Another significant event this year, I have a reader! (in fact the only one who introduced so far, all sites combined). Thomas wrote to ask me for advice on its Zenit 3M, which shutter didn't work well (the old Russian grease...) I made him a shutter disassembly manual (easy, there are four Zenit 3M at home at the moment, one incomplete, I photographed the dismantling and commented the images). But he was not satisfied with the results he obtained, so he sent it to me to finish the job. This was quickly done, screwdrivers, cleaning products and lubricants were already on the table!

Did I forget something? oh yes, Happy New Year 2010!

The Zenit 3M disassembly manual since arrived in the DIY pages!