Camera Rescue...Love this :-)

I'll post this in this medium format camera section, but it is directed to all film formats.

I just read about this project on fotosidan.se, a swedish community for photography, and thought It would be nice to spread the word on this forum.
Maybe there are more enthusiasts like these guys in other countries. I really like the project and hope it continues and that it inspires others. Let's hope that people read about this and decide to not throw away their old cameras. Most of them can probably be repaired and then someone else can use them, and have a lot of fun with them.

Basically the idea is that they buy and repair old cameras and put them out on the market.

If enough people hear about this maybe they realize that the cameras might be important for someone else in the future. Instead of throwing away the camera they can get paid for it, and then, after repair, someone else will pick it up and enjoy taking photos on film.
The cameras are a piece of history and we should treat them as that.

Here is the link:
https://camerarescue.org
They also list repair shops for analog cameras around the world.

-) I hardly can throw away a camera, each has a right to live, so to say.

-) I am seeing more repair shops vanishing than new emerging.

-) seen the prices from the old days when repairers even could specialize in certain models, and when spares were ready available and not have to be salvaged, likely anybody who ever spend hours on a single sample, just cleaning, let alone having found the issue... will likely say that such endeavour is economically tricky at least.
I often wondered, could or would I pay myself for such endeavours? Or just hoping for finding that sample for cheap without issues?

-) I already hear people whining about off the net prices for unchecked samples.

The camera enthusiast maybe will spend the money to get an old camera repaired. I certainly would.
But someone not interested in cameras will not, unfortunately. I sure can understand that.
Maybe these kind of projects can save some of the old cameras if people know that they can get paid at least a few dollars for their old cameras, and if they understand that there are people out there who care for these old strange mechanical things

The problem is that only enthusiasts know and care about this.

On the whole I've found repairing old cameras a rather expensive business. Some just need a bit of a clean, but if you need any parts then you usually end up sourcing another donor camera and scavenging those. Even something as simple as a broken spring can need a whole spare body to extract it from. Sometimes I've repaired a camera and it would have been cheaper to just buy an already working one by the time I've finished it, but then there is the satisfaction of getting a superb piece of engineering functioning again. I suspect that unless you already have a pile of dead cameras to extract parts from, it's not really economically viable. Even 'for parts or not working' cameras on eBay are going for way more than they should (probably because fools like me are buying them to fix other cameras). Of course then I feel that the donor camera should get working again and I just need a few parts for that...

xtolsniffer said:

On the whole I've found repairing old cameras a rather expensive business. Some just need a bit of a clean, but if you need any parts then you usually end up sourcing another donor camera and scavenging those. Even something as simple as a broken spring can need a whole spare body to extract it from. Sometimes I've repaired a camera and it would have been cheaper to just buy an already working one by the time I've finished it, but then there is the satisfaction of getting a superb piece of engineering functioning again. I suspect that unless you already have a pile of dead cameras to extract parts from, it's not really economically viable. Even 'for parts or not working' cameras on eBay are going for way more than they should (probably because fools like me are buying them to fix other cameras). Of course then I feel that the donor camera should get working again and I just need a few parts for that...

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I don't know the exact content of that project, but in all seriousness majority of old "non working" cameras need a simple CLA not new parts. A lot of them are simply stuck with old grease dried up, some have rather simple linkages dropped / disconnected / what have you . It does not sound like they want to make some profit driven corporation out of this, but rather make old cameras working (or simply checked) so others interested can have a go at taking pics with something that many never knew could actually do it. All in all a commendable idea IMHO.

xtolsniffer said:

Of course then I feel that the donor camera should get working again and I just need a few parts for that...

Click to expand...

That is the worst part of the repair issue.... at least for us amateurs. There never seems a camera too bad to be slaughtered.