Vintage Camera Repair - Ihagee EXA 500 - Slow Speed Shutter Timer & Tessar Lens
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ก.ค. 2024
- In this video I'll take a look at a 1967 EXA 500 film camera (also sold as the Exakta 500), made by Ihagee in Dresden, Germany. There are a few faults with the camera, the shutter curtains are dragging, so the rollers that they run on need cleaning and oiling, and the slow speed shutter timer is at best running too slowly, and at worst, it remains stuck with the shutter open. The Carl Zeiss Jens 50mm Tessar f2.8 lens also needs attention - there's dirt and fungus on the optical elements, and the focusing helicoid is almost solid due to dried old grease.
I'll work my way through the problems to get the camera back operating correctly - this is more of an overview than an instructional video, please don't think it's all as simple and quick as this if you're planning to attack your own camera - I probably spent half an hour on the slow speed shutter timer alone.
Start 00:00
Faults 00:09
Camera Disassembly 02:24
Slow Speed Shutter Timer 04:01
Shutter Testing 06:41
Camera Reassembly 08:01
Cleaning the Lens 09:04
Focusing Helicoid Disassembly 12:04
Helicoid Regreasing 14:57
Lens Reassembly 15:20
Summary 15:53
Outro 16:38
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Outro Music
"As Yet Untitled"
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I love to watch vintage camera repair. This is a great video!
Thank you for sharing.
Excellent, glad you enjoyed it Van Vo
Nice video! I Measuring the lens with a caliper is a great idea! And I also should get a random sheet of rubber.
Cheers ohjajohh, so long as you can find a convenient spot to measure the length at a set point before dismantling, it can take some of the headache out of the process, although I had a Mamiya lens that needed repair that had been dropped and nothing was square, so I just had to take that one apart and re find the infinity position afterwards - it wasn't too much of a drama in that case, but I bet some lenses are more tricky. Random sheets of rubber and a circle cutter have so many uses, from making friction tools for lenses and replacement rubber feet for old electronic equipment to making replacement seals for leaking things and so on.......
You are a very patient person to fix that. Old things where built much simpler and can be fixed unlike todays things. For what it is, it took a very clear and sharp photo. Something modern in the black & white photo would have looked surprising, such a modern car or a smart phone. I think every one that demonstrates old camera with photos or video should shoot something from our time.
I don't think I'm any more patient than you Joseph, it's very similar to figuring out what's wrong with an engine and fixing it - everything is just a bit smaller! The old cameras are so beautiful to look at, and nearly always designed to be taken apart and repaired, and as ever, I'd rather have a scruffy working example than a perfect looking one that doesn't actually work.
Watching you take things apart makes me wonder why I had a nervous breakdown when I cleaned my CZ Jena Tessar 50mm f2.8 😂
You're far more skilled and patient than I am with these things and it's great to watch.
I have a particularly grubby 135mm f2.8 that needs some tlc so I'll take inspiration from this and have a poke around I think.
Great video, Tim
I still get that same feeling David - there's always something that could go wrong, that tiny little part that could fly off never to be seen again and so on, but I guess if it wasn't exciting and interesting, and there was nothing new to learn, then I'd quickly grow tired of doing it - it's not as if I'm earning money by fixing old camera stuff. I've got a Yashinon 135 that I bought with another Yashinon lens, described as "no fungus", but what about all the really obvious fungus??? I really should have returned it, but confident Tim thought he could easily fix it - I can't get the name ring out, no matter how much I try. It works as a lens, because the fungus is only around the edges but it niggles me that I haven't been able to fix it - I could try some more aggressive techniques, but if they fail, I'd have been better leaving it as it was, so for the moment that one is staying as it is.
I have 2 Domiplans and the Tessar with similar problems, thanks again!
Hi Bill, yeah, it seems to be pretty common on the Tessars and the Domiplans - I've not worked on a Domiplan yet, but it's likely to be a similar process to fix. Well worth the effort because they're great lenses.
Miniature suction tools aye, they look fun.
So many tricks here obviously learned through experience but alien to myself.
Interesting mix of materials, not sure what i expected but the canvas shutter was a surprise.
Thank you for another illuminating video, and please help out with your subtle humour, why did your digital camera have an eyebrow?
That mini suction tool is intended for placing SMD components on a PCB, but it's equally useful for other stuff too - they're pretty cheap and easy to find, once you know what to search for. I think I was aware of the shutter curtains being made of some sort of rubberised silk or whatever it is, but they were always a big taboo and you needed to send your camera to a specialist if they went wrong - which in some respects isn't such a bad thing because it's all quite delicate in there. Usually you only get to see a tiny bit of the curtain behind the rectangular frame, so I was quite surprised the first time I got inside a camera to find out how relatively crude it is, with the ribbons at the side to pull the curtain over the image frame and so on. They're quite fascinating things, with each manufacturer using a slightly different system to do more or less the same thing.
I'm afraid that the monobrow on my digital camera is rather boring - those cameras suffer really badly from wind............noise - there are two tiny holes on the top that lead to the microphones. There are no commercial remedies for this, other than buying a more expensive camera that has an input for a better mic, so I just got a big wind muffler and cut a section out, which I then stuck over the holes with double sided tape (making sure the tape itself didn't cover the holes of course) - it makes a massive difference when shooting outdoors, although when using the viewfinder rather than the rear screen, the fur from the muffler sometimes goes into my eye which isn't so great!!!
Rubberized silk? I had no idea, greatfull to have been introduced to a new material for the day.
I could easily waste twice as much time as I already do pondering design choices, it's one of the draws of older products, quirks being few and far between in today's products.
It's also nice getting a few products together of different ages from the same manufacturer and seeing the evolution and innovation in the product's design or in the steps upstream in materials or tooling setting the designer free from the constraints he had a decade before, trying to remind myself that process took place in a large hall full of drafting tables, tea ladies and smoke or whatever the German, french, Japanese ECT. Equivalent to a tea lady was. What do Germans drink when they have to be sensible?
Very glad I asked about the fluff, wind noise is a struggle for me thank you.
I've seen it described as rubberized silk and also rubberized cotton, so I suspect both fabrics were used. You can buy brand new rubberized cloth and the ribbon material (at a price) so you can replace knackered shutter curtains. Some cameras have the leading edges stitched over a metal bar and others have what appears to be a three fold sheet of metal to make up the bar and secure the fabric - those might be a little trickier to replace the curtains, but I'll deal with that issue if and when it occurs. If stitching the curtains, or repairing pinholes in a curtain, you can ger a black rubber glue to seal the holes, otherwise you'd get exposed bits on the film. All this is theory, I haven't had to replace any myself yet, but I have had to re sew the ribbons onto the metal bar - that's a pretty simple exercise.
I've not had the chance to dismantle too many cameras from the same manufacturer yet but I bet it would be interesting to see how they developed over time and then fell into the "replace an entire module rather than repairing things" world. I've worked on loads of lenses from the 60s, 70s and early 80s - all beautifully dismantlable and repairable, but my brother has worked on a load of 90s (at least I think they're 90s and not late 80s) Canon lenses that are a disgrace of unrepairability - they use layers of flexible circuit boards that are soldered together in multiple places, really difficult to unsolder and there's only so many times you can flex them apart before they fail completely. There are also lens groups that are bonded into a housing - theoretically this should mean that damp can't get in, but it does, and they they grow fungus that you can't get to in order to clean them up. He's also worked on some slightly newer Canon lenses (only by a few years) and those had push fit connectors between the flexible circuit boards, so maybe Canon actually learned a lesson there (and I have no doubt that Canon weren't alone, it's just theirs are the only newer lenses I've had any experience with repairing).
Hope the home made wind muffler idea helps for you too - should be easy and cheap to try at the very least.
Hi Tim its been quite some time.... As u know i have successfully got my Olivetti Summa prima 20 back in working condition. And yes i am like old film camera too! I got my self a China made Peafowl DF_I it seems to be in good condition, but the reflex mirror is badly jammed up. Opening a cover underneath reveal the mechanism, after some oil and testing its now fully working😁.
Well done donkeykongx2, glad you've got the camera up and running. I'd never heard of Peafowl cameras (I had to look them up online), I guess they didn't make it to the UK, or at least not many of them anyway. That's a nice looking camera - I do love the look of cameras from that period
gracias por toda la informacion Tim , me acaban de regalar este modelo y no sabia como abrir tapa trasera ... 👍👍👍
Hola Magso, me alegra que te haya ayudado y espero que te diviertas mucho con la cámara. ¿Qué lente tienes con tu copia?
Hi Magso, glad it helped, and I hope you have lots of fun with the camera. Which lens do you have with your copy?
@@GrumpyTim Es un tele 135 , 2.8 fontron , aun no he tenido tiempo ni de sacarle el polvo , ya te contare en que estado esta .
Oh, eso es interesante, no es un nombre con el que me haya topado antes; me encantaría saber cómo es cuando lo usas.
Oooh that's interesting, it's not a name I'd come across before - I'd love to hear what it's like when you get to use it.
Cheers for the tips. I wonder how it does taking photos.
It should be fine taking shots - the shutter speeds are now working ok and the Tessar lens is a known quantity. The EXA 500 was a fairly basic camera, so there's no frills, but that suits me fine. What is a little odd, the EXAs are kind of triangular at the ends so it feels like it might slip out of your hands, particularly if shooting one handed. Also, it has that sticking out plunger on the lens that acts as the shutter release and it's on the left, so if you were shooting single handed, you'd be using your left hand. I've already got a film in it's earlier relative, the model 6 that appeared briefly in the video - that one has all the same oddities, like being triangular and the left hand shutter release, but it also has a waist level viewfinder, which takes a lot of getting used to, not having a prism to invert the image and so on.
@@GrumpyTim My Bronica ETRSi came with a waist level view finder but I fitted it with a prism with a meter in it (everything clips on and off those.including the backs which hold the film. Also I have a YashicaMat 124G which does have a waist level viewfinder and being a TLR has no clunky mirror which makes it great for candid shots where they don't know you have taken a picture.
@@BensWorkshop yeah, I've found out that no one thinks a you're taking a photo - I've actually got film in 2 cameras that have waist level finders at the moment - it's the back to front image that confuses me a little, but I'm getting used to it. Both of those cameras, can have the viewfinder swapped for a prism, but I wanted the waist level experience - it's all for fun after all.
@@GrumpyTim I the Yashica it is the right way up but when you move left it moves right. Thinking about it I presume the same is true for yours?
@@BensWorkshop Yep, that's it, and if the image looks a little down on the left hand side, I try to correct it and it gets worse!!! I am kind of learning to override my instinct now, having used them a little bit.
Hi Tim, have you tried the bigger sister of the Exa, the Exakta (Varex/VX model range), preferably the Exakta Varex IIb as well?
Hi SchwarzPoet, I haven't got one of the Exakta Varex cameras yet, but they're such a pretty camera I'm bound to get one sooner or later. Sometimes I'll go and search for a particular camera that I want, but often I'll just wait until I see a camera that I like the look of (and that isn't too expensive) and add it to the collection. There's a bit of a backlog in the repairs department at the moment, I'm currently working on a Mamiya Sekor 500DTL, which is one of the most frustrating cameras to take apart that I've worked on but it should be awesome once it's finished. It's not a pretty camera, but it's solid..... a bit like a brick, but I kind of like it.
@@GrumpyTim With the Exakta, you won't have any real problems with possible repairs, since you can get the entire inner workings out of the outer casing with just a few hand movements and loosened screws. The only thing that might need to be re-oiled/greased would be the long exposure times, which are set on the right side, just like the self-timer. Otherwise, you should check the cloth shutter for light transmission, as it can dry out if the camera sits unused in the display case for too long. However, cloth shutters can be purchased relatively easily on the Internet. Otherwise, you can literally hammer a nail into a tree with the camera up to the Exakta Varex IIb and hang it on the nail for the sake of a possibly missing tripod, in order to pick out your next configurations from the camera bag in the huge selection of accessories. (Ok, the saying is partially stolen :D )
The small knife inside the camera, which you can pull down when the back is closed and use to cut through the film, is a very nice feature, for example to develop the first exposed images and use the unexposed rest of the film later. For example, it's very helpful when testing a new film that you've never used before, and you don't waste so much material. By the way, the long exposure times are also very ingenious, since they can be set up to 12 seconds, independent of the self-timer and independent of Bulb.
Hi again SchwarzPoet, you do make it sound very attractive - I'll keep my eyes peeled for one at a good price - happily I can buy a body only example if needed, because I already have 4 or 5 Exakta mount lenses in my bag. When I got my KMZ Start camera I thought the film cutting knife was a pretty neat idea - it was only when I found out about the Exakta cameras that I figured KMZ might have "borrowed" the idea from them!!!
@@GrumpyTim [quote] When I got my KMZ Start camera I thought the film cutting knife was a pretty neat idea - it was only when I found out about the Exakta cameras that I figured KMZ might have "borrowed" the idea from them!!! [quote end]
I strongly assume so. You can see it in the Kiev 60 alone, which was very probably copied quite cheaply from the Pentacon Six TL. 😁
Enjoyed your video, what is the I. P. A fluid you mentioned, kind regards John Moore
Hi John, that would be Isopropyl Alcohol, sometimes known as Isopropanol and not India Pale Ale, which is something completely different altogether!!!
India Pale Ale sounds more interesting, 😜👍😂
Maybe the trick is to treat yourself to an India Pale Ale once you've finished using the Isopropanol on the camera/lens!!!