27 Oct
2012
27 Oct
'12
12:25 p.m.
At 9:13 PM +0100 10/26/12, Tony Duell wrote:
They are rather more ocmmon over here, as you said, it's an English
company,. I think they have been taken over now, but anyway.
I have an old 504. IT's built like a tank, a rigic cast frame, with
adjustable gib strips on the head slide, so you can take up wear. About
the only thing to go wrong with it are the bellows.
Ihave the Dichromat colour head. Again, it's nice and simple. The votlage
stabviliser and timer are all standard parts, I can fix them.
Oh, the 504 goes up to 5*4" negatives, and down, of course to
subminiature if you want to. It uses standed 'Leica Thread' lenses of course.
Fortunately the DeVere system is quite modular,
the timer plugs into the
votlage stabiiser, and one of the first things I did when I got the
enlarger was to trace out schematics. So I can make a digital timer to
plug into the smae socket if I want to.
I've never seen a DeVere in the flesh, and I've only seen a couple
photo's. You got me curious, so I looked them up, and it appears THere are at
lest 6 books. Two of them are brand-specifc -- Leica and
Nikon (note the latterc covers the S series ragefinder camers, the reflex
cameras and the Nikonos). The otehr 4 books are more general. Camera
Maintenance and Repair VOlumes 1 and 2 have gneral repair tips, methods
and how to make test instruments in the first half of the book and then
Which volume has the C64 shutter tester? I was wondering if I needed to get the original single volume, or the newer Vol. 1
or 2, in order
to get that design and source code. I tried googling for that info
with little success.
I haev all 6 books. Thew one I find most useful is 'Repairng the Great
Collectable Cameras'. Amaszingly, about the time I got it, a local camera
shop started to get in for sale second-hand examples of perhaps 50% of
the cameras in that book. I bought a fair number of them.
The Leica and Nikon books are interesting, but I regard those cameras as
being worth buing the service manuals for.
some details on taking apart
'representative' models. Restoring Classic
and Collectable coamers covers pre-war camers, how to mke bellows, tc.
Repairing the Great Collectable Camers is post-war models and covers some
very interesting designs.
The "Classic and Collectable sounds the most useful for me. I have a Nikon S that needs work, but plan to let a
professional fix the
timing on it. While it's not the original body, I have my
Grandfathers three lenses (35/50/135), and his accessories.
You might find the Nikon book interesting, just to see what is involved.
I need to find a scan of a book online I ran across recently... Ah,
I was smart and saved the link to the site, and here is the book.
You might find it of interest, if you have a way of viewing it. It
was done in 1917, and talks about all the old shutter designs.
http://cameraeccentric.com/html/info/repair_1.html
Thanks, I will take a look, even if it means a trip to an internet cafe.
Actually you might find the whole site interesting. Lots of *OLD* doc's.
http://cameraeccentric.com/info.html
There is a UK-based company Oldtimercmaeras, who sell copies of such
things. THey are not cheap, but then messing up a camera is not cheap
either. I can't afford them for the simpler cameras I own, ones I guess I
can fix anyway, but I am sure glad I bought the manuals for my Nikon F
and F2 stuff. And the manual for the MD2 motordrive is useful. Although
Nikon only suppllied the ocmplete control PCB as a spare part, the
manual includes the scheamtisc and component details. It's hjandy if you
wnt to work out your own devices to link to the motordrive connectors too.
[Shutter speed tersters]
None of them, IMHO, are a substitue for the
manufacturer's service manual
-- if you cna get it. And there are plenty of thigns I would do
differently. But the books are worth reading.
Definitely, but those tend to be hard to find. BTW, you might find this design interesting. I found
it last night
while seeing if there was anything online for the C64. I find myself
tempted by this design, I have several Apple //e's and a couple
//gs's (for this the //c's don't count). I like his dual input
solution, though it's targeted to 35mm cameras.
http://www.willegal.net/photo/repair/besttester.htm
I wil ltake a look. In general I prefer a standalone instrument, rather
than one that involves asettign u pa computer and monuitor, but anyway. I
plan to make a more genral speed tester to check things like curtain
travel time in a focal plane sutters, whether such shuttersare 'capping'
(closing inside the frame area), checking sync swtich timing, and so on.
However, such a simple tester will pick up gross
probles, like a sticking
escapemet. Just don't expect the higher speeds on the shutter dial to
agree with the timer. If in doubt, take a series of photographs of the
same illuminated grey card with different speeds, adjustign the aperture
to give the same exposure each time, and compare the densities of the
negatives. That will pick up any major erors in one of the speeds.
I'm actually the most interested in slower speeds for Large Format
(4x5 and 8x10) lenses. I'm pretty sure my 8x10 shutter is decidedly
off.