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Camera-service.ch: Impressions from a Swiss camera repair shop

No me. I am done with working for anybody. My time is my own now and I like it that way.
 
Sirius Glass said:
No me. I am done with working for anybody. My time is my own now and I like it that way.
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Andreas Thaler said:
What if you imagined it was your private workshop for your own work?
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If either Sirius or myself had such a workshop, and could make use of it, our post counts on Photrio would probably be much lower .
I appreciate the skills, knowledge, experience and interest of those who are good at this.
 
It'd be a great way for me to learn to curse in at least three different languages.
 
I have bad mechanical karma lately. And I'd rather be shooting than repairing. What I do appreciate is professional, competent technicians, though their number seems to be rapidly waning. Along with parts. Someone with a private workshop like that is of no use to me.
 

There are countless original spare parts in broken or no longer needed photo equipment. You just have to remove them.

I can therefore only recommend taking advantage of offers and never throwing anything away, because you might need a certain part the next day that you hadn't even thought of.
 

Generally there tend to be parts that fail in all cameras of a certain design, a weak ink. Those will not usually be found in working order in spare, broken cameras.
 
Pieter12 said:
Generally there tend to be parts that fail in all cameras of a certain design, a weak ink. Those will not usually be found in working order in spare, broken cameras.
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Which ones, for example?

Then buy two or more working cameras for spare parts.
 
If a camera were to fail (not from damage), it is usually the same part that goes. There are too many examples, from battery compartments deteriorating to prism desilvering, shutter curtains sticking. Just look at all the requests for help on this forum, many cameras of the same model have the same problems coming up time after time. And anything with electronics is pretty much a disaster waiting to happen.

One well-known and well-documented example is the failure of the AF motor in Leica S lenses. Leica subsequently changed the motor and the older lenses eventually need to be upgraded. Having a (very expensive) set of spare lenses would get you nowhere since they would have the old design. Similarly, the CCD image sensor of some of the early digital Leicas had a tendency of corrode. There are no replacements, there is no simple fix.
 

Similar to the LCDs in the Nikon F4 and its DP-20 viewfinder, which tend to leak. But there are still examples that are OK.
 
Pieter12 said:
And anything with electronics is pretty much a disaster waiting to happen.
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Not necessarily, I think at least the electronics in my 80s cameras hold up well.

Problems with contacts, defective electrolytic capacitors, leaking batteries. But I have not had any other broken electronic components.

This is certainly because the power losses in the circuits are negligible at the low voltages and components do not age due to overload resulting in heat. Flash units and motors excluded.

The electronics are more reliable than their reputation suggests.
 
MattKing said:
If either Sirius or myself had such a workshop, and could make use of it, our post counts on Photrio would probably be much lower .
I appreciate the skills, knowledge, experience and interest of those who are good at this.
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I am in violent agreement!
 
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