Приветствую товарищи!
Warning! If you don't like long posts or Russian cameras, this is probably not the thread for you!
After (hopefully and successfully) repairing my Zenit EM and then starting on a faulty 12XP, I thought I'd share a few pics of the repairs and findings.
Back before the days of d*g*t*lness, I briefly had a Zenit 11. It gradually fell to bits and went quite wrong with an eventual shutter jam. A friend took it to bits and couldn't figure out how to fix it, which was a bit of a shame, but no great loss as it didn't cost that much. It was a cheap second body for my cost effective Praktica M42 collection.
Fast forward to today, I now have 2 Zenit 12XPs, one working fully and one was bought as tested working but turned out to be spectacularly faulty. I also bought an untested and slightly faulty Zenit EM Olympic because I liked the look of it. I now get and enjoy using these agriculturally basic cameras. Plus, it makes my F2s or SQ-A feel like a Rolls Royce in comparison!
There's already loads of info around about Zenit cameras so here my take on a few brief bits. They were made in the Krasnogorsk factory near Moscow and were based on a Zorki rangefinder, which was a copy of an old Leica. So, the technology inside pretty much all Zenit cameras up to the later plastic/electronic ones is based on that from the 1930s... Cool! For your hard earned Roubles, you get 5 shutter speeds and a B setting because you don't need more than 5 shutter speeds. That would be far too decadent! You also don't get a camera body that also automatically stops the lens down (until somewhere in the early 1970s) or TTL metering, (mid 1980s) and the camera has adequate build quality to ensure its perfectly working just before it leaves the factory! This funnily enough, isn't a joke. Both cameras here had no screws tighter than just nipped up, and the actual screw threads looked fine.
Sounds like an interesting camera to live with? I personally find them pretty fun to use, they really do slow you down and feel pretty solid. They are also uber cheap! And did I mention basic?
Although some of the other FSU camera factories produced some quite technologically adventurous and advanced gear for the time (the Kiev 10 and 15 Automats are pretty good examples) the KMZ factory didn't with these cameras, and just stuck with the same basic mechanism and underpinnings. Which is quite a good thing when it comes to repairing them! I've CLAd most of my Nikkor (and other) lenses, along with many other mechanical devices over the years including clocks, watches and even cars! I'd never opened up an SLR camera before, so a Zenit seemed like a good place to start! I didn't intend to make this a full stripdown and rebuild guide, more a few pics and comments for anyone interested.
Zenit EM
Bought for something like £7.50 because I liked the look of it. Was sold as untested, but also didn't seem to have had a lot of use and abuse. I wanted to try to repair this camera if at all possible just because it's in really nice condition despite it's faults which were a intermittent dragging and sticking closing shutter. The meter also doesn't work properly, but this is the sign of a failing cell which can't be repaired easily. Meh!
Shiney but faulty!
Lens mount off
Top cover and mirror mechanism plate removed.
The wind-on lever is sprung so as it's removed the clock spring noisily unwinds itself. It looks like using something like a bit of guitar string or thin wire down one of the screw holes would stop this from happening. It's a fiddly job to wind it back up before fitting the wind-on lever, but not impossible!
Also, note the state of the prism foam...
Close up of the mirror mechanism
Top of the pentaprism and mirror box with horrible gunky foam mess
Bits including mirror mechanism cover, stop down lever and knobs
Camera and bits
From the back
Quite empty in there
Once it was stripped down I found the cause of one of the issues. Some bits of the prism foam had found their way into the cogs of the mirror mechanism in the bottom of the casing and were causing the cogs to stick slightly. Also, the closing shutter tension felt a bit low, which could have been caused by leaving the camera wound on for long periods of time. This seemed to fix the second issue. I was ready to completely dismantle the shutters and rollers, but they looked like they were in good condition, so I added a very thin film of ultra-light grease to the shutter runners, and started rebuilding it.
Reassembly - At this point, I realized that the flash trigger that should have been under the cover, was with the knobs!
Completed! Now being tested with a roll of FP4 and a Helios 44
After cleaning all the bits of foam snot from the prism and the insides of the camera including the mechanism, it all went back together quite easily. I used a bit of stick on foam for the prism clamp and then once it was all back together and visually tested it, shoved a nice roll of Ilford Film in it, which has almost doubled it's value!
All of the mechanism components seemed to be in really good and pretty much brand new looking condition, the only thing I noticed was that all the screws were a fraction off being loose. All of them! Maybe this could be the cause for reliability problems? The machined parts certainly look well made and solid enough...
Zenit 12XP
This is the Zenit I bought first to see what they were like. Paying £20, I got a decent Helios 44 and a body that was supposedly fully tested and working. Fully tested and working quickly turned into occasionally jamming shutter with faulty 1/30th and a lightmeter that works if and when it feels like it! I asked the seller for a partial refund who replied by saying no and telling me he'd get more for the lens on it's own. No idea why he'd bothered to sell the camera then! Moron ended up getting less money and I ended up with slightly less camera than I wanted!
Because this is a 12XP, it has TTL metering built in, or rather built on to it's somewhat pre-war inspired mechanism. There are changes to the shutter speed control, possibly to link it to the meter easily, but once you start looking under the new gubbins, you see some familiar parts! I have opened up and prodded around in this camera, but haven't actually stripped anything off it yet. That will happen on my next day off, next week! If I can fix this camera, great! If not and I end up with a pile of springs and wires, no great loss! It didn't cost much and it's a bit dented and scratched, plus I have a fully working 12XP that is in good condition.
Top off and full of wires and stuff
Lightmeter switch tagged onto the stop down mechanism
The lightmeter circuit board. The wiring is pretty neat and well insulated
Bent pin in the newer shutter speed selector
Above is one of the reasons for the shutter speed fault, or rather 1/30th sometimes acting like a B setting. This is a threaded screw/pin that moves the plastic center bit up and down depending on where the shutter dial is set. The up and down movement sets the point at which the closing shutter curtain operates. This threaded pin is bent, so the plastic up downy thing isn't being held in the right places! I'm not sure how it got bent. Maybe the mechanism jammed and was forced?
I'll update this thread next week, once I have stripped down the 12XP!
Warning! If you don't like long posts or Russian cameras, this is probably not the thread for you!
After (hopefully and successfully) repairing my Zenit EM and then starting on a faulty 12XP, I thought I'd share a few pics of the repairs and findings.
Back before the days of d*g*t*lness, I briefly had a Zenit 11. It gradually fell to bits and went quite wrong with an eventual shutter jam. A friend took it to bits and couldn't figure out how to fix it, which was a bit of a shame, but no great loss as it didn't cost that much. It was a cheap second body for my cost effective Praktica M42 collection.
Fast forward to today, I now have 2 Zenit 12XPs, one working fully and one was bought as tested working but turned out to be spectacularly faulty. I also bought an untested and slightly faulty Zenit EM Olympic because I liked the look of it. I now get and enjoy using these agriculturally basic cameras. Plus, it makes my F2s or SQ-A feel like a Rolls Royce in comparison!
There's already loads of info around about Zenit cameras so here my take on a few brief bits. They were made in the Krasnogorsk factory near Moscow and were based on a Zorki rangefinder, which was a copy of an old Leica. So, the technology inside pretty much all Zenit cameras up to the later plastic/electronic ones is based on that from the 1930s... Cool! For your hard earned Roubles, you get 5 shutter speeds and a B setting because you don't need more than 5 shutter speeds. That would be far too decadent! You also don't get a camera body that also automatically stops the lens down (until somewhere in the early 1970s) or TTL metering, (mid 1980s) and the camera has adequate build quality to ensure its perfectly working just before it leaves the factory! This funnily enough, isn't a joke. Both cameras here had no screws tighter than just nipped up, and the actual screw threads looked fine.
Sounds like an interesting camera to live with? I personally find them pretty fun to use, they really do slow you down and feel pretty solid. They are also uber cheap! And did I mention basic?
Although some of the other FSU camera factories produced some quite technologically adventurous and advanced gear for the time (the Kiev 10 and 15 Automats are pretty good examples) the KMZ factory didn't with these cameras, and just stuck with the same basic mechanism and underpinnings. Which is quite a good thing when it comes to repairing them! I've CLAd most of my Nikkor (and other) lenses, along with many other mechanical devices over the years including clocks, watches and even cars! I'd never opened up an SLR camera before, so a Zenit seemed like a good place to start! I didn't intend to make this a full stripdown and rebuild guide, more a few pics and comments for anyone interested.
Zenit EM
Bought for something like £7.50 because I liked the look of it. Was sold as untested, but also didn't seem to have had a lot of use and abuse. I wanted to try to repair this camera if at all possible just because it's in really nice condition despite it's faults which were a intermittent dragging and sticking closing shutter. The meter also doesn't work properly, but this is the sign of a failing cell which can't be repaired easily. Meh!
Shiney but faulty!
Lens mount off
Top cover and mirror mechanism plate removed.
The wind-on lever is sprung so as it's removed the clock spring noisily unwinds itself. It looks like using something like a bit of guitar string or thin wire down one of the screw holes would stop this from happening. It's a fiddly job to wind it back up before fitting the wind-on lever, but not impossible!
Also, note the state of the prism foam...
Close up of the mirror mechanism
Top of the pentaprism and mirror box with horrible gunky foam mess
Bits including mirror mechanism cover, stop down lever and knobs
Camera and bits
From the back
Quite empty in there
Once it was stripped down I found the cause of one of the issues. Some bits of the prism foam had found their way into the cogs of the mirror mechanism in the bottom of the casing and were causing the cogs to stick slightly. Also, the closing shutter tension felt a bit low, which could have been caused by leaving the camera wound on for long periods of time. This seemed to fix the second issue. I was ready to completely dismantle the shutters and rollers, but they looked like they were in good condition, so I added a very thin film of ultra-light grease to the shutter runners, and started rebuilding it.
Reassembly - At this point, I realized that the flash trigger that should have been under the cover, was with the knobs!
Completed! Now being tested with a roll of FP4 and a Helios 44
After cleaning all the bits of foam snot from the prism and the insides of the camera including the mechanism, it all went back together quite easily. I used a bit of stick on foam for the prism clamp and then once it was all back together and visually tested it, shoved a nice roll of Ilford Film in it, which has almost doubled it's value!
All of the mechanism components seemed to be in really good and pretty much brand new looking condition, the only thing I noticed was that all the screws were a fraction off being loose. All of them! Maybe this could be the cause for reliability problems? The machined parts certainly look well made and solid enough...
Zenit 12XP
This is the Zenit I bought first to see what they were like. Paying £20, I got a decent Helios 44 and a body that was supposedly fully tested and working. Fully tested and working quickly turned into occasionally jamming shutter with faulty 1/30th and a lightmeter that works if and when it feels like it! I asked the seller for a partial refund who replied by saying no and telling me he'd get more for the lens on it's own. No idea why he'd bothered to sell the camera then! Moron ended up getting less money and I ended up with slightly less camera than I wanted!
Because this is a 12XP, it has TTL metering built in, or rather built on to it's somewhat pre-war inspired mechanism. There are changes to the shutter speed control, possibly to link it to the meter easily, but once you start looking under the new gubbins, you see some familiar parts! I have opened up and prodded around in this camera, but haven't actually stripped anything off it yet. That will happen on my next day off, next week! If I can fix this camera, great! If not and I end up with a pile of springs and wires, no great loss! It didn't cost much and it's a bit dented and scratched, plus I have a fully working 12XP that is in good condition.
Top off and full of wires and stuff
Lightmeter switch tagged onto the stop down mechanism
The lightmeter circuit board. The wiring is pretty neat and well insulated
Bent pin in the newer shutter speed selector
Above is one of the reasons for the shutter speed fault, or rather 1/30th sometimes acting like a B setting. This is a threaded screw/pin that moves the plastic center bit up and down depending on where the shutter dial is set. The up and down movement sets the point at which the closing shutter curtain operates. This threaded pin is bent, so the plastic up downy thing isn't being held in the right places! I'm not sure how it got bent. Maybe the mechanism jammed and was forced?
I'll update this thread next week, once I have stripped down the 12XP!
