Agfa Standard Lens Board Stuck

[joshgladstone]

Hey everybody.

So I just got an Agfa Standard with rangefinder and was really happy that it seems to be in pretty decent shape. Then I did something stupid and started to close the camera with the lens set to close-up and not infinity. Now I can't get the lens board back out of the camera. The grip you use to pull out the board button on it which needs to be pressed to allow the camera to come out, and the button seems to be stuck now. I know there's a feature that is supposed to stop you from being able to retract the lens board when not set to infinity but that didn't work and I'm guessing this is what is stopping it from unlatching. Any thoughts on how to fix this? Thanks!

 

[Rick A]

Check this site to see if you can find a manual for your camera.

http://www.butkus.org/chinon/

 

[joshgladstone]

I've read the manual. This issue is certainly not covered in the manual. I'm asking if anyone has personal experience fixing this specific issue, or advice for disassembling the camera. The only solution I'm able to come up with so far is to bend the focusing lever enough to be able to turn it back to infinity while still retracted in the camera body. This would allow the mechanism to unlatch, but I'd really be risking breaking the camera, and I'd like to avoid that if possible.

 

[joshgladstone]

Okay, so I did fix it without messing it up too much. I did exactly what I described above: bent the focusing lever over enough that I could refocus to infinity while still retracted. The camera then folded out properly and I bent the focus lever back into shape as best I could. The lever is a bit worse for wear, as I had to use some pliers and a bit of force, so that sucked. Definitely do not close this camera without focusing to infinity.