OK, dramatic headline. But I'd be curious to hear how people think around the issue of 'authenticity' and original designs, etc. I'll give two examples, both on Rolleiflexes.
You'll see Rolleis, usually from late '40s into the '50s, with bolts used for attaching a flash solenoid, brackets scabbed onto side panels, etc. I just dealt with a cold flash shoe riveted onto a focus hood assembly. To me, these things point to a willingness to make something work. To overcome design limits, to deal with special circumstances and needs. The camera is a tool and you make tools work for you. Something much more common 50 or more years ago, of course. So what is a special object to us today was a useful object to be made more or less useful as you needed it. Were these people modifying Rolleis at that time destroying them?
Second example: Rolleiflex MX-EVS, early model. This has an EV lock system. But no permanent cut-out for the EV lock; you need to press a small button on the aperture dial to temporarily uncouple the shutter and aperture. Later models had a permanent cut-out so obviously Rollei had to accommodate people who didn't like the older design. So not liking the EV system at all, I decided to simply grind the gear teeth off of the two gears that do the coupling. Put the toothless slugs back in. Voila!! No EV coupling, gone, never to return. As I see it, the tool was flawed and making it hard to use as I wanted. I know full well that I will never want the EV feature. Removing it permanently makes sense. At most, I could have made slugs for the gears and put the gears in a corner of the camera in case someone wanted to rebuild the EV system. But phooey... Have I desecrated a temple? Am I going to hell? Is it wrong to have a camera that works as I want (and works very very smoothly!) even though I have altered its original design? Do I owe it to 'the future' to not modify a camera?
You'll see Rolleis, usually from late '40s into the '50s, with bolts used for attaching a flash solenoid, brackets scabbed onto side panels, etc. I just dealt with a cold flash shoe riveted onto a focus hood assembly. To me, these things point to a willingness to make something work. To overcome design limits, to deal with special circumstances and needs. The camera is a tool and you make tools work for you. Something much more common 50 or more years ago, of course. So what is a special object to us today was a useful object to be made more or less useful as you needed it. Were these people modifying Rolleis at that time destroying them?
Second example: Rolleiflex MX-EVS, early model. This has an EV lock system. But no permanent cut-out for the EV lock; you need to press a small button on the aperture dial to temporarily uncouple the shutter and aperture. Later models had a permanent cut-out so obviously Rollei had to accommodate people who didn't like the older design. So not liking the EV system at all, I decided to simply grind the gear teeth off of the two gears that do the coupling. Put the toothless slugs back in. Voila!! No EV coupling, gone, never to return. As I see it, the tool was flawed and making it hard to use as I wanted. I know full well that I will never want the EV feature. Removing it permanently makes sense. At most, I could have made slugs for the gears and put the gears in a corner of the camera in case someone wanted to rebuild the EV system. But phooey... Have I desecrated a temple? Am I going to hell? Is it wrong to have a camera that works as I want (and works very very smoothly!) even though I have altered its original design? Do I owe it to 'the future' to not modify a camera?
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