Interesting discussion. So I had a couple of pretty terrible repair experiences over the past year. The main one was a repair odyssey involving my beloved, and still broken to this day, Minolta Autocord (I will write a separate post about this - but thank you very much for nothing at all, Sandro Presta).
Anyhow - I'm at the point I can't be arsed anymore. I just want to take pictures and not wait 8 months without my camera and then regularly spend its value worth in repairs every couple of years or so.
So I'm more and more leaning towards my trustworthy, plasticky, unloved by many, electronic 90s cameras. I have a few that just keep ticking and ticking like a Casio watch. Are they pretty? Kind of, who cares? Do they do what's on the tin? IME yea, unfailingly so.
So off I go with my N90s, F301, Fuji GA645i. Some ugly ducklings I spent respectively $50 $30 and $400 to purchase, and which are giving me results I will treasure for years. And they keep working, and working and working.
'But, Batteries"! - I can buy them cheap off amazon, and they'll last for years
Electronics will fail! - I will dump the whole camera and buy another one. In fact I have a few backup bodies aligned.
But they look like modern digital cameras so nobody will know you're shooting film - happy with that
But the beauty of the manual controls is lost! - love manual controls and TLR ergonomics, so I suppose I will have to live with this compromise.
Long live unrepairable 90s Japanese electronics
Try to find someone to repair a 1990's electronic camera. Its all the same.
About 15 years ago, when analogue photography was nearly dead and every body got rid of their 'old stuff' and jumped on the digital train, I bought a second used Hasselblad 500C/M, a Planar 80mm and a Distagon 60mm for less than twice as nothing, and an A12 for free.
Then I got these CLA'd and keep them now as a spare set, and have it 'working' once a month to keep it in good shape.
My more extensive and initial set is used regularly...
Anyway, when eventually all spare parts are gone, I can take the most worn for cannibalizing (which would be sad but inevitable)...
BTW, this is what a friend, living in France, does: he has 6 Citroën traction avant but only one is in full working order, 4 are donors and one is waiting for a spare part to be found...
Cars and cameras are so different that it's hard to compare much about them. Modern cars, even the "good ones" are frustrating because they are in fact more reliable than years past, but are also disposable and shockingly easy to be "mechanically totaled" with a few traditionally minor problems. I'd gladly own and maintain a Mercedes or BMW from the 70s or 80s rather than any of the current products from either brand.The move to electronics in many industries was not just to push more extensive functionality (although that certainly was a large part of it). Reliability had a lot to do with it. The same with cars, but many people still have lots of trouble wrapping their heads around that one.
Wait, maybe cars and cameras can be compared after all?
Interesting discussion. So I had a couple of pretty terrible repair experiences over the past year. The main one was a repair odyssey involving my beloved, and still broken to this day, Minolta Autocord (I will write a separate post about this - but thank you very much for nothing at all, Sandro Presta).
Anyhow - I'm at the point I can't be arsed anymore. I just want to take pictures and not wait 8 months without my camera and then regularly spend its value worth in repairs every couple of years or so.
So I'm more and more leaning towards my trustworthy, plasticky, unloved by many, electronic 90s cameras. I have a few that just keep ticking and ticking like a Casio watch. Are they pretty? Kind of, who cares? Do they do what's on the tin? IME yea, unfailingly so.
So off I go with my N90s, F301, Fuji GA645i. Some ugly ducklings I spent respectively $50 $30 and $400 to purchase, and which are giving me results I will treasure for years. And they keep working, and working and working.
'But, Batteries"! - I can buy them cheap off amazon, and they'll last for years
Electronics will fail! - I will dump the whole camera and buy another one. In fact I have a few backup bodies aligned.
But they look like modern digital cameras so nobody will know you're shooting film - happy with that
But the beauty of the manual controls is lost! - love manual controls and TLR ergonomics, so I suppose I will have to live with this compromise.
Long live unrepairable 90s Japanese electronics
Wait, maybe cars and cameras can be compared after all?
And for some people, they fill a garage!They do both begin with "ca". And they contain an "r".
Wait, maybe cars and cameras can be compared after all?
Cameras and other mechanical beasts undergo natural selection as the years go by. The poorly designed or less robust falls by the wayside leaving the good one to last the years. Eventually the majority of whats left are the ones built to last or are easiest to repair.
This is an important point.
My own experience with many of the pre-WW2 Retina cameras built in Stuttgart is this: even the oldest of them, dating to 1934, are well built and unless they've been abused. They can still be restored to 100% functional with a proper servicing, rarely requiring replacement parts. The Compur shutters of that era are as good as any shutter ever made, and after a cleaning, they run as well as when new and do not need calibration of the speed train.
This photo was made with a 1935 Retina type 118 with the standard Schneider Xenar lens, with the lens wide open at f3.5
Cameras and other mechanical beasts undergo natural selection as the years go by. The poorly designed or less robust falls by the wayside leaving the good one to last the years. Eventually the majority of whats left are the ones built to last or are easiest to repair.
...it is actually very hard to find a repair service for old mechanical cameras. And if you should be lucky enough to find one, hope not to need spare parts, because there are none. ...
About 15 years ago, when analogue photography was nearly dead and every body got rid of their 'old stuff' and jumped on the digital train, I bought a second used Hasselblad 500C/M, a Planar 80mm and a Distagon 60mm for less than twice as nothing, and an A12 for free.
Then I got these CLA'd and keep them now as a spare set, and have it 'working' once a month to keep it in good shape.
My more extensive and initial set is used regularly...
Anyway, when eventually all spare parts are gone, I can take the most worn for cannibalizing (which would be sad but inevitable)...
BTW, this is what a friend, living in France, does: he has 6 Citroën traction avant but only one is in full working order, 4 are donors and one is waiting for a spare part to be found...
Good for you! More and more people are doing this. And learning to do it right, not just a little lighter fluid and WD-40.
I was learning on ES-II and find they can be had for twenty bucks. They always have the same problems. And I have a few spares for parts if ever needed.
I got one cleaned up and working 100% and stopped doing work on the rest because I was happy with the good one. Should have kept working on them because the good one is already starting to falter. I wish I could just grab the next one and keep shooting. I wish they had over-engineered the mirror return catch because it takes a fair second curtain velocity to make the mirror return. You have to hit pretty hard.
That is when I changed my name to Sirius Glass.
About the same time I traded in my inherited Mamiya C330f with three lenses for a Hasselblad 503 CX and a 250mm lens. I then proceeded to buy us more Hasselblad lenses. That is when I changed my name to Sirius Glass.
Any "electronic" camera that uses custom chips (such as custom integrated circuits or PROMS) suffers from the same problem: there is often no source of those custom chips other than a donor camera. Some electronic parts also naturally degrade (e.g., capacitors) over time.
As in "The Late Don_ih"?If I were a train, I'd be late ....
As in "The Late Don_ih"?
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