Once again, I’m on the prowl for a new and funky camera. By “new,” I usually mean one that’s been out of production for around 50 years, weighs as much as a newborn Holstein calf, and smells like the bottom of a longshoreman’s kitbag. By “funky,” I mean the kind that requires either an obsolete film format or a banned mercury battery, or, more often than not, both. And by “on the prowl,” I mean sitting at my computer with my hair-trigger cursor poised above the “Bid Now” button as I sort through eBay listings for cameras, most of which read along these lines: “Up for bids is this neat old camera I found wrapped in a sock in my dead uncle’s basement. It looks like it would work, but I know nothing about cameras, so this one is being sold ‘As Is.’ NO WARRANTIES OR GUARANTEES! NO REFUNDS OR RETURNS! BID NOW! DON’T LET THIS ONE GET AWAY!”
I find it odd that no one on eBay knows how to use a camera. The law of averages seems to dictate that at least a few people with cameras in their possession should have some fundamental understanding of how they work. How hard is it to look through a window and press a button? It’s the same basic principle behind anti-aircraft artillery and submarine periscopery. This leads me to believe that most of these sellers know exactly what the camera should do, and they know full well it isn’t doing it. “As Is” is a handy little term that implies most buyers will at least find the seller’s broken crap decorative, which is a sentiment I resent deeply. And I refuse to partake in any auction by a seller who doesn’t know the difference between “accept” and “except,” as in “I except money orders and checks,” or “No personal checks excepted!” I cannot accept this use of except, nor will I accept instructions from the exceptionally ignorant. I feel the need to bait sellers such as these with messages like, “I’ve got a fourth-party check drawn from a Serbian bank that has since been turned into a methadone clinic specializing in street mime rehabilitation. I have endorsed this check in green crayon using letters from an alphabet of my own creation. I know nothing about checks, so I can’t guarantee you can cash it, but it’s quite pretty and would look nice in a hardwood frame. Since you except no checks you should happily accept this one. Also, I’m trapped in an invisible box and am therefore unable sign for registered packages.”
Where was I? Ah yes, a new camera. The exceptionally attentive reader might ask, Have you not just blogged about how much you love the camera you already have? Just how many cameras does a person need? How many do you have, anyway? What’s with you and this whole camera thing? Do you have any idea how boring this is for the rest of us? And where’s your half of the rent? Shawn used to ask such foolish questions as well. Used to. Now he merely smiles serenely and escapes to a quiet place somewhere in his mind while I explain at great length that although my two Yashicamat cameras may look alike, one has the two element Yashinon 85mm f/3.5 lens and the other has a three element Yashikor 85mm f/3.5 lens. The difference between them is night and day. Or at least noon and 3ish.
I realize that cameras may not fascinate everyone. I’m sure my blog would be immensely more popular if I was a stamp collector or an amateur botanist, or a sassy ski bunny turned tell-all Hollywood escort. You gotta work with what you’ve got. It could always be worse. I could be blogging all about my dog’s latest bout with diarrhea and the havoc it wreaked on our (landlord’s) carpeting. I could tell you how much I love my iced tea maker. I could be reviewing Joan Rivers fan sites, or posting pictures of my cats dressed as famous news anchorpersons.
And yes, while I can talk Shawn into a glassy-eyed semi-coma with my personal version of camera evolution through the ages, the only reason I know about these cameras is because the line between charming antique functionality and hopeless obsolescence is so fine. It would suck to get all excited about finding a mint condition Agfamatic only to get it home and realize it will only work with 126 films...which haven’t been made in 30 years. Wanna know which film formats are still being made and by which companies? I bet you don’t. But I could tell you, just like I could tell you all about the great mercury battery debacle. I could tell you that thousands of cameras were made to operate exclusively on 1.3 volt mercury batteries, which were banned because mercury leaking from discarded batteries was poisoning water supplies under landfills. I could tell you that this single act doomed many a photographer who had built an expensive system around their mercury battery powered camera. I could tell you that people are still traveling to Europe, where the batteries weren’t banned until 1998, just to smuggle back as many mercury batteries as they can find. I could further tell you that mercury batteries were superior to today’s alkaline or zinc-oxide batteries because they kept a consistent voltage for the duration of their life, and that the modern day batteries of the same size are now a different voltage, 1.5 volts.
See? You see all the useless knowledge I’m stuck with? It impresses no one at parties, I can tell you that, and frankly, anyone it did impress isn’t the kind of person you’d want to par-tay with in the first place. That actually reminds me of a wildly funny and entertaining story, which I won’t go into here, because this blog is about cameras. I must remain “focused.” Ha!
Anyway, between Shawn and my sexy self, we own about 1,000 useless little plastic figures in the shape of various Simpson’s characters. There are only so many useless things a person has space for in the average household, and 12 pound cameras that don’t do squat will find no home here. And yes, I’ve got a few other cameras already. The camera I previously blogged about, my beloved Nikon F2, is and will always be a 35mm camera. There’s more to life than 35mm, though. There’s medium format, which produces a negative three times the size of a 35mm. That’s a huge negative! Is a bigger negative a better negative? Well, sure. While I understand that in the real world bigger isn’t always better (as with tumors, spiders, and frilly satin bows), in the world of photography, bigger is always better. Just think of it as the difference between a 3 and 7 mega pixel digital camera. Besides, if medium format wasn’t better, how could Hasselblad justify the $18,000.00 price tag of their new H1 medium format outfit? When you consider that the average coronary bypass operation costs about $20,000, it really makes you wonder how the two compare in terms of sound investment value. This begs another question: Is more expensive necessarily better? My $20 medium format Argoflex and I hope the answer is no.
This little guy was made between1945 and 1947 by the Argus Camera Company in Illinois. Argus is actually still in business, although now they make crappy digital cameras. This is a Twin Lens Reflex camera. The top lens is the one you focus with when you look down through the hood in the top of the camera. The bottom lens is one that takes the picture (strangely enough, it’s called the “picture taking lens”). This set up produces a phenomenon called “Parallax Error,” which means that since the two lenses don’t actually view the scene from the same height, you’re afforded ample opportunity to chop your subject’s head off when you take pictures with it. Jolly good fun, that. The Argoflex, and every other camera that came after it, regardless of who made it, shamelessly copies design aspects stolen from the newly defeated Germans at the end of World War II (there’s a fun fact for ya!).
My $20 Argoflex was in perfect cosmetic condition when I got it. The only problem was it didn’t work. Half the joy of older (“vintage” if you must...I avoid this term because it’s usually followed by “collectible,” the single most overused word in marketing today) cameras is that they’ve sat around unused for decades, giving all the internal parts time to fuse together and for lubricants used on gears and levers to solidify. I discovered that Argoflex E shutter blades are prone to sticking because the grease used to lubricate them made them stick. I discovered that one could simply clean the blades and it would work like new. I discovered that removing the lens to get to the shutter couldn’t be simpler. And, lastly, I discovered that having the “i” so close to the “u” on a keyboard when you’re repeatedly typing the word “shutter” means you’d better type carefully.
And so begins the blog segment, Vintage Camera Repair for Dummies.
Before attempting to repair your camera, you must familiarize yourself with its features. The following technical schematic should prove helpful.
Now that we’re familiar with the lens assembly, we can begin the more interesting disassembly. Remove Mysterio 1 by prying it off with a razor blade. This will bend Mysterio 1, but we’ll worry about that later. Loosen the several tiny screws hiding under Mysterio 1, which will reveal more screws that loosen the Silver Ring of Mystery, causing it to fall off unexpectedly, taking with it the Black Ring of Mystery. Now we’re making progress!
The abundance of tiny screws makes the next step fairly obvious.
Welcome to the inner sanctum! We’re close to those shutter blades now! While I will admit that what we’ve got here is essentially a horrendous tangled mass of gears, levers, and springs, a crystal clear photo of the assembly will make it simple to put everything back where it was.
Now it’s simply a matter of cleaning the offending gunk and setting the blades back exactly as they appear. Then, reassemble. When you finish, you should end up something that looks like this.
Deep down, I think we all knew there was no way the Argoflex was coming back after step 2, especially after I lost one tiny spring and spent three days looking for it, to no avail. Too bad, too, I really liked it. This is a Koni Omega Rapid, also a medium format camera, which I got to replace the Argoflex. It’s a press camera from the 60’s. It also has a loose back, which I understand is quite easy to repair. Challenge excepted!
