Mechanical vs electric film camera repairibility

[AgX]

There is no doubt about that. But a generic, cheap, progammable microcontroller fed with the tasks of that IC can substitute it. In principle.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

Or there are people who have written new, alternate "operating systems" to replace the software within the camera.

This is more labourious, i think, that dropping a microcontroller with an ADC and DAC inside a film SLR using an electronic vertical shutter !!!

With some of Canon prosumer cameras, folks have written firmware for them. What Canon and I'm sure other camera manufacturers are or were doing the same is that they offer several cameras which are really the same cameras. Let me explain. The only difference is just superficial. The 3rd party firmware would unlock features of the more expensive cameras in that line. So the manufacturer makes one type of camera but can sell more features with more expensive cameras which are physically the same. I think it's installing unauthorized firm ware voids the warranty, may make the camera inoperable and may violate usage agreement between camera owner and Canon. As with hardware, I'm only guessing that the ROMs on the cameras are custom so fixing it with a third party part is difficult. Manufacturers hold the bag if the camera breaks. As pressure mounts to sell new cameras, I doubt if they will help you fix your camera.

 

[John Koehrer]

I still don't get it. Be it mechanical or electrical, as long as you can get the replacement part, you can have your camera fixed, right? What make the electrical is harder?

After the responses so far the summary is:
Making a custom IC isn't really practical. In theory, go ahead and have it done; it might cost a buck or two though..
Something any competent technician in earlier days wouldn't have a problem fabricating parts. If it's a hobby
or you want a challenge you can do a lot with hand tools. From a money standpoint it's not always practical.

 

[Luckless]

The huge hurdle to any reverse engineering effort is money.

IC fab houses don't build individual ICs.
They build hundreds or thousands, whatever will fit on one wafer.
And wafers keep getting larger and larger.

Add to that the tooling and setup required for a production run.
Then amortize that over building a single wafer rather than thousands.

A single replacement IC could easily cost more than $10,000.

- Leigh

Or... You could replace it with a $5-20 FPGA, microcontroller, or similar chip that you flash to meet your design specs and respond to signals in the manner you want.



As for Canon selling 'the same camera' with different firmware, I'm not aware of any models that would actually be classified as that. Their modern DSLRs will frequently use the same core controller chips and such, but other parts of the architecture are wildly different. (More/less memory and such.)

 

[tessar]

Nearly all my film cameras are mechanical. In my experience reparability seems to depend on quality of camera (professional makes like Nikon or Leica are easiest), popularity (availabity of parts) and age. Most crucial is finding a qualified technician. In the city of 1 million where I live there are none left who work on mechanical cameras. I have no electronic equipment worth repairing.

 

[Leigh B]

Or... You could replace it with a $5-20 FPGA, microcontroller, or similar chip that you flash to meet your design specs and respond to signals in the manner you want.

Spoken with the resolute assurance of a novice.

Where do you get the design specs?
How do you know what signals are available, their maxima and minima, and dynamic characteristics?

What error detection circuits are built in?
How do you interpret their states?
How do you clear those?

And the list goes on...

- Leigh

 

[Berri]

- Incorporate a Temperature compensated log amplifier (in theory the Nikkormat EL already has it inside the circuit). This is done with an opamp, and I think there are modern dedicated ICs that do the specific job.
- Feed the output to an ADC (analog to digital converter) to read the value.
- Feed the ADC's output to the microcontroller

cool! but I live in a simple town, where simple repairsmen have screwdrivers to repair cameras; all of that would be impossible, and even if I'd go to the town wher repairsmen have electronic skills this would probably cost far more than buying a new camera!

 

[Luckless]

Yes, a complete novice more with than a decade of robotics and embedded systems development...

Where do you get the design specs? Why, you would develop them yourself. Reverse engineering, develop your own from scratch, or find existing open sourced designs. (I've seen a few people online who have design for camera repair stuff, but not many.)

They're cameras, not nuclear reactors.

 

[Leigh B]

Yes, a complete novice more with than a decade of robotics and embedded systems development...

Apparently you learned more in your decade than I did in 5 decades of design work.

- Leigh

 

[Luckless]

Probably not, but I did get to enjoy the advantage of starting with tools and equipment that were nearly half a century newer tech than you by the sounds of it. Not exactly an overly fair comparison.

 

[flavio81]

cool! but I live in a simple town, where simple repairsmen have screwdrivers to repair cameras; all of that would be impossible, and even if I'd go to the town wher repairsmen have electronic skills this would probably cost far more than buying a new camera!

Well Berri, you live in the land of cheap cameras then.

Here i live in the land of expensive film cameras and very good technicians.

 

[AgX]

Yes, a complete novice more with than a decade of robotics and embedded systems development...

Where do you get the design specs? Why, you would develop them yourself. Reverse engineering, develop your own from scratch, or find existing open sourced designs. (I've seen a few people online who have design for camera repair stuff, but not many.)

They're cameras, not nuclear reactors.

But even fiddling around with one such substitute controller to make it fit into a SLR, searching for contacts, wiring it, even without programming it, will likely cost more time than extracting and inserting original boards, modules.

That microcontroller approach though may be possible and economical for a repairer who specialized on certain models.

 

[zanxion72]

+1! Not to mention that one cannot reverse engineer anything, not anyone can surface mount things with precision in small spaces, etc.

Someone noted here that it is easier to replace electronics than the broken teeth of a cog. Actually it is easier to find a replacement cog, or have an engineer make an exact replacement for you (in the case of expensive equipment that is worth it of course), than find replacement ICs and matching parts for dead electronics. Take the Nikon F4 for example, and the case where it fails to advance the film to frame 1. If this happens, your F4 is pretty much dead as you cannot repair this by yourself, nor you can find any replacement parts but another working F4.
You can dig further in this. The Pentax LX is another fine example. It is a wonderful camera that today, when the lights go out you are done. You could have it repaired in 2010, but as of today, no spare parts can be found.
This problem gets worse as time passes by and replacement parts become even less available. There are other many examples around with expensive gear that is no longer repaired by anyone and/or the cheapest solution becomes replacing the broken cameras with working ones.
Of course, there are cameras with simple circuitry that can be easily fixed (Zenit 18 for example).

 

[Berri]

ere i live in the land of expensive film cameras and very good technicians.

lucky you

 

[Berri]

you live in the land of cheap cameras then.

I hope it's not gonna be the land of cheap film too!
So you suggest that if I'd come where you live with my Nikon F6 with dead electronics you could find someone who is able to make and program a microcontroller that interfaces to my camera and it would work again? how much would that cost? 10K is enough?

 

[flavio81]

I hope it's not gonna be the land of cheap film too!
So you suggest that if I'd come where you live with my Nikon F6 with dead electronics you could find someone who is able to make and program a microcontroller that interfaces to my camera and it would work again? how much would that cost? 10K is enough?

So who has diagnosed your F6?

Because electronics cameras often "die" to trivial, easy to solve things like corroded contacts, cold solder joints, etc. A technician doesn't need to be an electronics genius (as Antani was) to solve it.

In camera electronics the hardest to replace parts are the custom ICs. But at the same time it is very rare to have an IC fail. Unless we apply wrong polarity voltage to it, excess operating voltage, or it dies from substrate failure due to "ungood" manufacturing.

 

[wiltw]

Electronic cameras are more complicated to repair and there are more things that could go wrong. Mechanic cameras usually stop working properly for simple reasons; a spring gone out of place, old stale lubricant or things like that. In the case the mechanic shutter breaks it will be very difficult to repair and probably not worth the money. A vintage car is easier to repair than a fully electronic modern one. (I'm not sure how many today's car will be around in the next 50 years)

Agreed! I just saw a 1970-74 vintage BMW 2002 driving down the street. I doubt we will see a 2010 vintage BMW E90 driving down the street in 2055.

In camera electronics the hardest to replace parts are the custom ICs. But at the same time it is very rare to have an IC fail. Unless we apply wrong polarity voltage to it, excess operating voltage, or it dies from substrate failure due to "ungood" manufacturing.

My Canon 5D (vintage 2005) died in the middle of shooting a year ago. Luckily 5D main circults can still be found, so it is once again operating well. But Canon does not repair them at all; new replacement parts not to be found. I paid to fix it because I know my shutter count was low; buying a used replacement for the same amount of money is a gamble about shutter lifetime having been depleted by 5-10x, in comparison to mine.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

Are there any old farts out there that worked on their cars back in the day? Now it's virtually impossible with computers running cars. It all started with points and condensers getting replaced with electronic ignition.

 

[tedr1]

Best thing that ever happened to ignition.

I used to work on my 1991 car all the time, never did get it all fixed. Bought a 1999 replacement and I don't work on my car anymore, it never goes wrong

 

[flavio81]

Are there any old farts out there that worked on their cars back in the day? Now it's virtually impossible with computers running cars. It all started with points and condensers getting replaced with electronic ignition.

It's not impossible. If anything, it is EASIER.

Electronic ignition is a blessing. Thanks to electronic ignition (CDI), you don't need to adjust points or change the contacts. Just change sparks and adjust gap. It also enables a spark of greater energy.
If you know electronics then you can service a standard (80s) CDI module, if you feel like servicing it. Otherwise you can replace it, even with an aftermarket part.

Second, thanks to modern engine control units, just plug a scanner that "talks" to the ECU and it will report you immediately what is wrong with the engine. So diagnostics is easier.

Third, instead of removing the carburator for cleaning, you remove the injectors for service or replacement.

Car manteinance has not become impossible at all, just different. I contend that (a) it is easier now, and (b) thus, modern mechanics know even LESS than older mechanics.

Moreover, for those who think that electronic spare parts can't be manufactured... Nowadays you can replace, if you want, your engine control unit (ECU) with a do-it-yourself ECU, for example the "MegaSquirt" ECU. You build the hardware, the software is already made, then you configure it according to your engine.

FAR easier than having to design a the "ideal-for-your-engine" carburator from scratch and then having to manufacture it, not to mention test it...

 

[markbarendt]

I agree Flavio

 

[wiltw]

It's not impossible. If anything, it is EASIER....
Second, thanks to modern engine control units, just plug a scanner that "talks" to the ECU and it will report you immediately what is wrong with the engine. So diagnostics is easier.
...Car manteinance has not become impossible at all, just different. I contend that (a) it is easier now...
Moreover, for those who think that electronic spare parts can't be manufactured... Nowadays you can replace, if you want, your engine control unit (ECU) with a do-it-yourself ECU, for example the "MegaSquirt" ECU. You build the hardware, the software is already made, then you configure it according to your engine..

Been driving BMW for a very long time, the current one is the most computer filled, computer-ridden car with diagnistic reporting. Yes, it might inform you what is 'wrong', but then you have to guess as to the one or two or three things CAUSING the issue. Knowing I have 'excessivly discharge battery' is the reported trouble, but I still need to figure out if it is

1. bad alternator (no output)
2. bad voltage regulator (no output)
3. bad battery (simply old, or dead cell)
4. bad IBS not sending right commands to cause alternator and VR to output the right voltage to charge the battery
5. some electronic module not 'going to sleep' and continuing battery drain all night, for days on end

I coulda done all of that even without OBDII report of 'excessively discharged battery'

Car maintenance now is made harder because there is more stuff crammed into the engine compartment now than in a car 50 years ago, so you have to pull out lotsa stuff just to get at what is broken.

 

[flavio81]

Been driving BMW for a very long time, the current one is the most computer filled, computer-ridden car with diagnistic reporting. Yes, it might inform you what is 'wrong', but then you have to guess as to the one or two or three things CAUSING the issue. Knowing I have 'excessivly discharge battery' is the reported trouble, but I still need to figure out if it is

1. bad alternator (no output)
2. bad voltage regulator (no output)
3. bad battery (simply old, or dead cell)
4. bad IBS not sending right commands to cause alternator and VR to output the right voltage to charge the battery
5. some electronic module not 'going to sleep' and continuing battery drain all night, for days on end

I coulda done all of that even without OBDII report of 'excessively discharged battery'

If you had a "conventional" car with no computers, and your battery light turned on from time to time, you would have to review items 1,2,3, and 5 anyways. So there is no difference compared to "conventional" cars.

Granted, BMW has had a rather infamous record of unreliable electronics in the last 20 years. Fortunately other brands are doing much better. Mercedes for example.

Car maintenance now is made harder because there is more stuff crammed into the engine compartment now than in a car 50 years ago, so you have to pull out lotsa stuff just to get at what is broken.

This is debatable. There were also cars with hard-to-access internals down to the 1950s or 60s.

Car manteinance, i repeat, is simpler. Because for example with a modern multi-point-sequential-fuel-injection car (MPSFI - many many modern cars have this kind of injection), you have something almost equivalent as having one carburator per cylinder.

Anyone that has had to work doing tuning on an engine that has one carburator per cylinder (i.e. some racing engines) knows that the latter is MUCH more difficult to tune properly than a modern engine-controlled MPSFI car. Not to mention service...

But with MPSFI, which is pretty much ubiquitous these days, you get the benefits with much simpler service.

Another example: Distributor-less multi-coil ignition. Nowadays you can have one coil per cylinder, no distributor needed. Less high voltage wiring needed. Coils are much smaller, so changing them is easier.

Ignition timing is nowadays controlled by the ECU. As long as the crankshaft position sensor works, timing will never go off. Compare this with the old schema of having vacuum controlled timing retard/advance (anyone who has worked with engine vacuum diagrams knows how this is a pain to service if there is a leak or if some component has aged), and centrifugally-controlled timing advance.

My engine (mercedes M112 V6) has 6 cylinders but 12 spark plugs. And 6 ignition coils. If this arrangement used the 1970s distributor-ignition, plus the old big ignition coils, it would have taken LOTS of space under the bonnet and would have a maze of wiring to connect. Rather, the coils are driven by the ECU, no distributor. As long as the wiring is good and the spark plugs are good (and these are spark plugs rated to last like 100K kilometers), it should work just fine.

 

[AgX]

Fortunately other brands are doing much better. Mercedes for example.

I have been driving two samples of the Type C were the engine was going made whilst driving. Making it undrivable in even a dangerous way. The first one spent three weeks at the official Mercedes garage as they did not find the cause.

 

[AgX]

But what does that tell us about cameras??