Repair in NYC --- HELP

[SMBooth]

Have broken the metering chain in my Pentax 67 while on holiday in New York, is there anywhere to get it repaired. The problem is the chain jams the aperture ring as it rotates. Otherwise l would run without the metering.

 

[sdotkling]

Alas, you're a year too late. There was a great Pentax 6x7 repair place called Lens & Repro that serviced fashion photog Steven Meisel's collection of Pentax 6x7's (he reportedly had 60 of them), but they closed! The repair staff scattered to other places in the Photo District. Go to Foto Care ( 41-43 W 22nd St New York, NY 10010 Phone number (212) 741-2990) and ask if they know anything. Good luck.

 

[Oren Grad]

I think this is the place where the Lens and Repro repair folks ended up:

http://www.cameradoctornyc.com/

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Another place well regarded is

Nippon Photo Clinic
37 W 39th St
Ste 401
New York, NY 10018
b/t Avenue Of The Americas & 5th Ave in Midtown West

Phone number (212) 982-3177

I've never used them myself, and have no affiliation with them, but they have been well-reviewed on Yelp, and another user here has used them and recommended them in another thread about getting a Rolleiflex CLA ((there was a url link here which no longer exists))

 

[Newt_on_Swings]

Nippon can take from 3 days to up to a week and is very pricey. It seems they have core weed the market and upped their prices. I don't know anywhere else that's still open that does repairs especially walk in. Calumet used to have a repair guy too right in that area by lens and repo and fotocare but they are gone too.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

I've used Nippon. Not cheap, but they stand by their work and won't take something they think they can't fix.

lens and repo

I'm imagining a couple of rough looking characters with cigars and fedoras like Weegee knocking on the studio door and saying, "Pay up, or we'll have to collect that Graflex over there!"

 

[Chris Lange]

Another place well regarded is

Nippon Photo Clinic
37 W 39th St
Ste 401
New York, NY 10018
b/t Avenue Of The Americas & 5th Ave in Midtown West

Phone number (212) 982-3177

I've never used them myself, and have no affiliation with them, but they have been well-reviewed on Yelp, and another user here has used them and recommended them in another thread about getting a Rolleiflex CLA ((there was a url link here which no longer exists))

I've used them numerous times for many cameras, as I said in that other post. They used to handle my father's repairs all the time when he was working full time in the fashion industry...they are worth the price.

 

[SMBooth]

Brought a screw driver and pulled the top off , the chain bits are now in a film canister. Seems to be freed up and fine to use , sans meter. With get fixed but in Australia so can keep using camera. Thanks

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

How do you organise these disasters to occur at the worst possible time? There must be a place up there that can do the fix, but give them time -- reassembly and calibrating the flange is the delicate bit. Gosh, this has spooked me. I have a repair procedure pdf for the broken chain malaise. I'm sure you could do it yourself, but you will need a new section of chain -- possibly canibalise another 67 (no, not mine!).

Sent from my GT-I9210T using Tapatalk

 

[SMBooth]

Email it to please Gary (or link if to big). I'll worry about it when home. Worst case l will remove the chain and put the unmetered prism back, then sell the metered prism.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

Emailed website link.

Also see Asahi Pentax 6x7 Service Manual (for post-reassembly calibration):
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B-E...M0Zi00ZmVhLTgzMTQtOGRiMGI3NzJlYzMz/edit?hl=en
Note: This is a 12.1Mb pdf — download when home.
( Page 71 of the actual 142 pages in the pdf details calibration of flange and coupling. or 4-4-6 METER COUPLER by header ).

( The entire manual detailing the ins and outs and innards is a quaint throwback to the steam era! )

An alternative repair — no chain [experimental]
When home, go to Spotlight and get some very fine Tigertail beading wire (AUD$2.95 for a small pack, and highly flexible) plus tiny crimps (to secure the end of the wire once loops have been fashioned). This would work very effectively in lieu of a new or second-hand chain, and the tensile strength is several times much greater than the original 6x7 chain. Many, many other uses for beading wire beside this, so it's not really money gone to waste.

 

[SMBooth]

Was going toy with the idea of fishing line?

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

Was going toy with the idea of fishing line?

We don't really know the amount of force involved with the movement of chain through the aperture mechanism (but it must be significant for a chain to break), that's why I angled for the wire method. Tigertail is multistrand, actually stainless steel with as much flexibility as fishing line at that fine gauge. But you really only want to do this fiddly, bits-and-pieces repatriation once, so make it a strong job.

 

[Newt_on_Swings]

Would they have designed it as to have an inexpensive chain break vs the other parts that it's attached too? If so, high strength steel wire may cause the other parts to break?

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

Would they have designed it as to have an inexpensive chain break vs the other parts that it's attached too? If so, high strength steel wire may cause the other parts to break?

For a long time my thought has been that the chain is a product of poor design, but your suggestion does have merit; we really do not know what Pentax was thinking by using this tiny and relatively frail chain.

By the time the last of the newer (1990) Pentax 67 bodies came out, the chain had been improved in terms of its construction giving overall better strength, but breakages do still occur — the mechanism is designed like that, either to breakaway' to avoid more profound damage of allied components, or is just crude and rudimentary. As you can see from the engineering diagram taken from the Pentax 6x7 Service Manual, there is not a lot of mechanical involvement with the chain and its routing, yet the whole lens aperture to camera interface can be spectacularly hobbled by the that silly chain, brought about by the improper fitting (or poor fit) of the prism, or more commonly, not following the mount prism first/lens mount is second procedure. You actually don't need to dismount the prism fully for this breakage risk to happen; it only needs to be ajar on one side and the interface has been lost. I imagine that with Tigertail, significant force would need to be exerted for a breakage to occur, and what effect this would have on other components, as you have surmised, really isn't known.

 

[Newt_on_Swings]

The chain setup is very interesting. I've done repairs on my olympus cameras, and the om4 has a similar setup but with a nylon string that is attached to the aperture lever under the bayonet mount. But it doesn't take much force to open the aperture fully on om lenses so that may be a reason a thin string works in that case.