Dead Trip 35 meter circuit rehabbed successfully
I was aiding my sister in law pack up her apartment for a move, and she gave me an Olympus Trip 35, saying that 'it doesnt work anymore'. Well, once home, I searched the web, saw that it had a bit of a following, and a good lens. She bought it in 68-70 time frame, and replaced it in 75. I usually dont keep 'dead' stuff around that long.
I though 'why not see what is dead'. A bit of disasembly (no better way to learn than on a dead camera, right?) revealed:
The selenium cell leads were glued in place, so taking that apart is of no use in cleaning the cell contacts with an eraser as some had suggested for bringing back demised selenium cells.
There was a wire that had come out of the end of a litlle resistor that must be used to adjust the ensitivity of the cell and meter circuit. I untwisted the little knot of wiring all this happend in, and found that there was a sleeve that could be slipped aside to byass the resistor and touch the loose lead against the feed directly from the selenuim cell. I pointed the camera to a light source (I was doing at night in the basement), and the meter needle moved well with even the limited light. So there was still hope.
I just needed to figure out the value of the unmarked gray bodied resistor, and replace it. My VOM meter lead could not make contact with whatever was left of the broken off end of the resistor, by poking a thin lead down the clear shrink wrap sleeve leading to the broken end. On a whim I thought to try to poke the broken off lead back into the end of the resistor ( and measure the resistance from the meter end of this wire) and low and behold -the circuit began to make a relaible connectionas long as the wire stayed pushed into the end of the resistor. It worked!! The the connection was re-established.
The whole mess of wires where this had happened was neatly blu-tacked into place to dissuade the flaky resistor connection from openning up again.
On re-assembly until the last top screw by the winder end goes in you can still pry up the top to see the meter move to verify that the meter circuit was still working after all wiring was packed.
I shot a test roll, to verify that the selenium has enough umph to correctly drive the meter in real world conditions. I was a little unsure about how to re-install the film speed shutter that regulates how much of the selenuim cell gets exposed to the light, relative to the setting on the ASA dial, so there may be some fine tuning there, if the shot roll does not seem to be exposed properly.
Otherwise I now have another working camera. My wife just rolled here eyes when I told her. I might relegate this one to sit in the glove box in an insulated lunch bag pre-loaded with HP5/TriX for those .. wish I had a camera with me... moments
