Recent content by vandergus

Check out Pro Camera in Charlottesville.

I've put together some guides for the Pentax Super Program over on iFixit. Just wanted to share the resource and mention a couple interesting things I found while exploring the camera. https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Pentax_Super_Program A fancy ME Super: The simplest way to think about the...

If you don't have experience servicing cameras, do not start with the LX. It's a beast. And, yes, this looks like your shutter curtain speeds are off and they are overlapping during the exposure, rather than maintaining a proper gap.

It sounds like you're doing everything right in terms of servicing the advance mechanism. I wouldn't do it any different. One thought is to try to isolate different parts of the camera that the advance lever is driving. For example, when I service a K1000, the advance action feels much...

Advance Camera in Portland OR is the best place to get an LX serviced in the US (as far as I know). They have a lot of experience working on them, have at least some stock of spare parts and can even reapply the weather sealing.

Yeah, not really. This method is for a specific set of auto-advancing cameras. Manual advance modifications usually require changing the gearing somewhere in the advance mechanism. It is a bit trickier.

Yeah, that looks promising! Unfortunately, some counter PCBs are limited in how they can be modified. The film advance can only be changed in increments, not infinitely adjusted, so you have to get a little lucky. In this case, it sounds like you would have to settle for a pretty wide frame...

N80s won't work with this mod, unfortunately. They use IR sensors for controlling film advance rather than rotary contacts. With what I currently know, I would recommend an N90 if you're looking for something that can use a wide variety of lenses. You can shoot AI lenses in aperture priority...

The N60/F60 looks really promising. It's the only Nikon body I've cracked open and it has a counter PCB very similar to the Pentax PZ-1p, which was really easy to mod. I think the N90 is modable and maybe even the F100, which would be...crazy. The N80, N65 and N55, use IR based film advance...

Thanks, that's good to know. The EOS 650 is on my short list of cameras to experiment with.

So far I haven't had to get tricky with the frame counters. The cameras keep on going past 36 frames. And since they are just displaying a number on a screen rather than incrementing a physical wheel, I even get accurate counts. I usually get ~55 on square and ~75 on half-frame. The rewind isn't...

I've been messing around with camera mods lately, specifically, modifying 35mm SLRs to shoot other formats. My first project was a half-frame Pentax MZ-3, and currently I've been enjoying a PZ-1p that I converted to shoot square frames. The conversion involves masking the film chamber and the...

The ME and ME Super will shoot at the mechanical speed (1/125) without power. So what's probably happening is that there is enough electrical continuity in the system for the meter to work, the LEDs in the viewfinder give an accurate reading, but when the shutter is fired, something gets...

I'm seeing 4 oz. bottles of Nyoil for $20 online.

This isn't going to get you a good looking photo. You still have to correct for the orange film base, adjust the contrast (the exposure information on the negative scan is usually all clustered in the center of the histogram), then do further color balancing to get it to look right. Some film...