Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Cartridge

I'm afraid Andreas inspired me, and my ADHD is a bit unleashed nowadays... As I had some time today I had a first look at a camera I bought because it looked cool and was somewhat cheap (I think I paid €10 for it, and it looks clean enough)

The beast is a Folding that runs on 120film (it had a roll in it, some Verichrome Pan that's so old the paper is crumbling. I may try to sell if some collector wants to pay big money for it.)

Current known issues are that I'm unable to unfold the bellows, the shutter is a bit lazy and the lens foggy.

Today's work has been removing the shutter and lens, for cleanup and diagnostic. (And this is the moment I realize I have no images of the camera before I started working on it, sorry for this!)

Removing the shutter only needs a spanner wrench to remove the retaining ring from inside. The shutter is a tiny thing, and the lens is even smaller




The name plate and the lens spent 15 minutes in the ultrasonic cleaner with a solution sold as a "metal degreaser", which is a soapy stuff and not too aggressive. This gives pretty good results on small parts.



Three slotted screws (already removed) retain the lens back plate.

The shutter appears when the plate is removed, and looks clean enough.


The shutter is held in its "carter" (not sure of the name) by three small slotted screws.



A first reassembly seemed to improve the operations, but at the moment it's still a bit random.

Proper reassembly is a bit tricky, I'll detail this in another post when I have more energy.

Three projects running in parallel, respect

Andreas Thaler said:

Three projects running in parallel, respect

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Well, it has more to do with unleashed ADHD I'm afraid but it helps getting somewhat sans in Trouble times. Bad side is that I think it's also what keeps me away of the darkroom.

(And I'm afraid it's 4 in parallel, I just did not start reporting about the Pentax SV )

So, today was a small day as I was working.

I lubricated the shutter a tiny bit and it seems more cooperative. It also seems fiddly and picky: if you want 1/25, you have to go full path to 1/50, then back to 1/25 otherwise you're using Bulb. Since this is not an action camera it should do the trick.

I also tried removing the pin from the "chariot" hinge which allows folding the front standard all the way back to fold the camera itself. It came somewhat easily (small hammer, small steel pin to push it, and a piece of scrap wood on the other side to maintain the camera) and now the standard moves!

I'll have to replace the pin when I understand what I need to fix to be able to fold/unfold the camera properly.

I could inspect the bellows, which are not light tight (you did not expect they would be, I guess!) but there are only some pinpoints at the corners, so I hope I can fix that with some patches from the inside.

I remove the "finder" (I'd rather call it a searcher, as it is of little help to actually find anything ) and dropped it in the ultrasound cleaner. It's better but the lenses have crap inside, so I'll have to disassemble this to get it clean. Seems easy enough, there is a frame that closes the finder and it is held in place by small deformations of the sheet metal.

I did not resist the opportunity to make some photographs of the camera...




I like the way the camera is focused, by moving the front standard to an index which can be adjusted:



That's all for today, at least for this project.

Laurent said:

That's all for today, at least for this project.

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A glass of wine to celebrate the day?

Andreas Thaler said:

A glass of wine to celebrate the day?

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A beer would be better, but it's Dry January. I'll have to generate other opportunities with other cameras (I just missed a F1 sold for 35€ ... )