This camera came in the same lot I wrote about in the first Canon Canonet post and I mentioned then that there was a story with this camera. Well, here’s the story.
When it arrived the shutter wouldn’t fire, it was seized up with some oil that was visible on the aperture blades. I wasn’t too surprised by this, I bought them untested and didn’t pay very much. I found tutorials online saying it was simple enough to clean off the oil with lighter fluid if you could get into the lens. Since I was diving headlong into film processing and scanning, why not dive headlong into camera repair too? I didn’t even bother buying a lens spanner, I just went in jabbing away with the tools I had. And I did it! I got the lens open and got the shutter to fire. But then it seized up again and in trying to get it to fire again I somehow wrenched the film advance too hard causing problems I wouldn’t fully understand until later. Until then, I had to get the shutter firing so I opened it back up and managed to get it unstuck once more. But this time I had accidentally jiggled some tiny spring in the clockwork shutter speed mechanism that is built into the lens and the camera was now completely kaput. But I wouldn’t give up, and after four or five different rebuild attempts I finally got all of the tiny springs and plates and pieces back in their right places. At this point the aperture, shutter, and shutter speeds were all working great, even the self timer was working! But now the issue I mentioned before reared its ugly head – the film advance lever (which also cocks the shutter) was broken. Or at least, something in that mechanism was broken. It would wind and would cock the shutter, but unfortunately it would over wind due to a stop not remaining in place. This led to two issues: the shutter trigger wouldn’t register properly so you couldn’t take the picture, and it would allow you to wind through your whole roll of film without taking a single shot.
I have yet to solve this film advance issue, but I stuck a little rubber nub on the top plate of the camera to limit how far I can wind the lever which allowed me to shoot this roll. After I developed and scanned I discovered the final issue, that the rangefinder and lens are misaligned causing many of my wide open shots to be out of focus.
I don’t even know if I really like this camera. It has the most comfortable bright viewfinder and rangefinder but it’s surprisingly big and heavy. Yet despite this unexpected size, all the controls are on the lens which ends up feeling very cramped. It all adds up to a sort of clunky experience, which is a shame because it’s in beautiful condition and has a nice fast lens. I’ve put this camera into a box for now, maybe I’ll fix it up in the future or maybe I’ll pass it along.
Hit Rate: ~14/24 (58%)
September 19, 2021
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