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I did it, friends! After the discussions that spawned this thread, I found a few hours and the confidence to try to repair my lens. My Canon 50mm f1.4 lens's autofocus does not work, so I figured it would be nice to try to fix, since there seemed to be a good amount of resources online for disassembling this lens. The lens had been dropped several years ago, and there was something rattling inside, so I was hoping it would be a matter of finding something that just needed to be put back into place. The lens:  Let me tell you, if I did it anyone can do it! If you believe in yourself, anything is possible!  —including turning your half-broken lens into a completely broken lens  !For reference while disassembling and reassembling the lens, I followed this youtube video and the links included in the video description. So, what happened? The disassembly process was fine. I was able to take apart all of the portions of the lens that are covered in internet guides related to this lens.   Apparently, a common problem with this lens is a deformation of plastic around a very narrow area of material which causes autofocus problems. I happened to find this issue present in mine, too.  I followed the suggested remedy of just smushing it into a flat surface to bend it back into shape, and that seemed to work fine.  Bad decisions started occurring after that, because I had not found any obvious source of the rattling I had observed. I found no loose parts in what I had taken apart so far, and this was as far as most of the guides I found when while disassembling the lens. The rattling was coming from inside the optics assembly (pardon me if I'm not using correct technical terms here). So, naturally, I was still over-confident and came this far, so I decided to take apart the components that housed the actual lenses.  Nothing seemed wrong. As far as I can tell, the rattling was the piece with the wire strip present in the background of the photo above, however, it I didn't see any signs of anything broken that was supposed to secure that part, so I'm not sure what was going on there. I wiped off some dust that was on the glass while I had it taken apart. Reassembly time!  In hindsight, this is where my problems started. I didn't put the glass back together straight. I think you can see it in the photo above; look at the glass as the top of that assembly and I think you can tell it's not on straight/level. I didn't notice at the time because I'm dumb. I got the whole thing back together without any issues. Time to test!  Autofocus still doesn't work. Great, oh well. How's the manual focus work?  For reference, here's a focus I took a few days ago using manual focus:   Obviously, I realized here that I had hosed up. Luckily, the mystery wasn't obscured too deeply as it's still visible.  Who would've thought that camera lenses are instruments of precision that have small tolerances for error?  Oh well, I at least got the lens back together so at this point it was time for me to go to the bar to celebrate.  I suppose I might try taking this apart again another day to see if I can correct that. It's not like I can gently caress this up much more than I already have. P.S.: if anyone is interested in this particular lens, I have plenty more photos of the disassembly process and I can post if requested. Anyone know of any good Canon lens repair shops that will cost less than the price of a decent used lens?
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Sep 17, 2018 05:57
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 20:36 |
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CodfishCartographer posted:Y'know, it never occurred to me that you could even put a lens in crooked like that. I assumed they would just, y'know, fit in nice and flat. Yep, that's what I was assuming, too. CodfishCartographer posted:Also poo poo, you're braver than I am. I dunno if I'd have the nerve to open up a modern lens with all the electronics they have. At least with mechanical stuff I can (theoretically) figure out how it all goes together and what all the bits do. If I had to bet on what went wrong, maybe that loose wire should have connected to something on the board that's visible? Maybe?? Yeah, I would still be terrified of opening up a more complex lens. This being a prime lens at least made it feel a bit simpler. Honestly, I'm surprised how uncomplicated this lens is inside. I'm really impressed by the engineering that gets everything inside these lenses working while still keeping them manageable for a human to take apart.
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Sep 17, 2018 16:06
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Good news! I got a lens spanner tool, unscrewed the lens that was out of place and screwed it back in. That fixed it! My 50mm is now just half broken again, but at least it's usable in manual focus.  Apparently using the right tools for a job is a good thing. 
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Sep 19, 2018 22:47
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President Beep posted:The little pulley that usually resides under the rewind know slipped off its spindle, taking a tangle of string with it. Of course I didn't note how it all was supposed to go together, as I didn't plan on monkeying around with that stuff--I don't think I've ever uttered such a pathetic and defeated sound. After some desperate googling, I found a few images and illustrations that gave me a very basic understanding of how to re-route the string. It was such a pain in the rear end, but I eventually got everything back into place... Blackhawk posted:I also had the pulley and string come off and I almost gave up hope when it happened but figured it out eventually too. Just a comment, in an effort to set a precedent for the thread: in order to help avoid the Wisdom of the Ancients problem, I'd like to suggest re-hosting and including resources like the "few images and illustrations" that helped you re-route the string. I don't need it myself, but I figure it might be good to save the particularly hard to find, yet very helpful assets found during repair attempts.
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Nov 13, 2018 07:49
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Sauer posted:The leatherette on the Iskra was a total write off. Began to crumble once I started pulling on it. Will replace it with some swanky. In the mean time... I fully support this. As a punk hipster  , I long ago jumped from "duct tape everything" to "gaff tape everything". It looks loving great on that camera. My only critique is I would have lined the back from bottom to top, so that the seam lines would only be visible from lower angles.
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Dec 5, 2018 05:52
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youth 
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Hello everyone, it's me, Pseudorandom, here with yet another story of me "fixing" something only to break it even more! I just bought an old Yashica-Mat LM that had a few minor problems. The first was the focus knob being free-turning and thus doing nothing; that was just a matter of tightening a nut that had come loose. The problem I was trying to fix here was that the camera's shutter button was missing. I haven't been able to find a spare for a reasonable price yet. However, when I was first testing the camera after I purchased it, I noticed a small loose part that later fell into the camera while I was trying to actuate the shutter though other means (read: poking with a screwdriver). I had a small hypothesis that the shutter button had somehow been pushed into the camera, so I figured I might as well open it up to see what was inside. The first step was removing the leatherette. I generally followed the advice, posted above by CodfishCartographer, for removing it. I neglected to photograph that process, but luckily the leatherette was really dry and kind of brittle, so I actually was able to get most of it unstuck just by applying pressure from the edges to shift it and break the bond of the glue. I managed to get it all off in one piece, except for a little of the top corner.  Naked Yashica:  You can see the missing shutter button on the bottom left. CodfishCartographer posted:Next I removed the shutter's outer casing. This is NORMALLY done by removing five small screws, but this camera only had four. I guess someone lost one at some point! Also, ONE OF THE SCREWS WAS STRIPPED! What the gently caress, previous repairman? Strangely, my camera also only had 4 out of 5 screws. In my photo above, the empty spot can be seen halfway between the left (shutter speed) knob and the brass-colored screw on the bottom left. Also, it's me. I'm the one doing the screw stripping. So, shutter outer casing removed, then the the lens assembly:   Watch out for those 4 little "C"-shaped spacers (two pictured, left in second picture). They like to stick and then get lost, and if other internet resources are to be believed, they may be very important for focus calibration. With all of that removed, I unfortunately did not find a misplaced shutter button, but I did discover that the loose bit I had seen was likely the screw that held the shutter button on (seen on the bottom left of the second picture). I wanted to make the camera usable, so I decided to improvise and make my own shutter button.   Re-assembled:   Now's the fun part. I don't yet have any suitable adhesive to put the leatherette back on, so I figured I'd make a temporary bit out of gaffer tape. I fiddled for a bit trying to think of a good way to make a stencil using the existing leatherette, but then I realized the easy answer: I could just scan it and make a copy.  Leatherette scanned, printed, and placed in-place on top of some gaffer tape stuck to parchment paper.  Stencil successfully cut out!  First half of gaffer leatherette.  All done! (I forgot to take a picture with the shutter button nut present). So with this done, I tested it. Shutter worked fine, I messed with shutter speed settings, and then tried the aperture. That's when the aperture gear came loose or something and now turns freely, leaving the aperture wide open. So, I managed to make the camera more broken than it was originally within 30 seconds of "fixing" it.  Guess I'll be making another post soon when I attempt to fix that and break something else.
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Apr 3, 2019 00:32
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I should not be allowed to touch cameras, because all I'm doing is fixing stuff only to break other things. You were right, Codfish, I pulled it back apart and the little levers were just misaligned, so that was a quick fix. Once I got that together, I noticed that the shutter blades were now suddenly sticky and slow to close. I decided, what the hell, I'd pull it apart and see if I could maybe through some lighter fluid on the blades*. However, once I was close to getting the shutter assembly out, I quickly realized several things: 1. There were tiny wires and springs I'm not currently prepared to deal with. 2. Tiny things moved and I didn't make note of where they were supposed to be. I spent the next hour or so trying to figure out the mechanics of this so I could get everything back into place. I think I figured it out, but worryingly, I concluded at least one part must have been bent somehow, because bending it back was the only way I could figure out to get the shutter cocked; otherwise, one of the levers involved seemed to be slipping. Hopefully I didn't gently caress anything up by doing that. During that process, the shutter blades seemed to stop being sticky and seem to be working, at least for now, because of course they are. That said, something else seems to have stopped working out of nowhere. Now the winding arm isn't able to push far enough to actually cock the shutter. I don't see anything that seems off in the assembly I was loving with, and I can see that the arm that transfers movement from the crack has room to move further (about the same distance that would be needed to finish cocking the shutter), so I think there's something wrong with the crack gears. I suppose tomorrow I'll try taking that apart to see what fun combination of things I can fix and break. * I didn't get around to trying to clean the shutter blades, but now that I have time to ask, is Zippo Premium an acceptable substitute for Ronsonol? I googled around and I think it is, but I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who might know for sure.
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Apr 3, 2019 06:20
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President Beep posted:Hoo boy. I’m constantly having to gently caress with my yashica mat shutter, so it’s not just you. It’ll randomly decide to stick once in a while but work like a charm most of the time. This sounds like pretty much the same issue I'm having. I made a video to try to show what's going on, since explaining it via text seems kind of difficult: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n_ltdYLQfE
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Apr 4, 2019 21:34
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CodfishCartographer posted:Unfortunately, I can’t provide a lot of feedback on this I tried do google around to see if I could find any references to something like this, but on my first attempt didn't find anything. I did, however, find some places that recommend putting tape on the empty film spool to help prevent the gear from slipping. That did seem to fix the issue of the lever occasionally only moving halfway, however the main issue of it not moving far enough cock the shutter is still there. I might see if I can find something in my house that I could use to shim one or more of the different contact points to at least test different options.
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Apr 4, 2019 23:05
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I can say that I’ve used empty film spools in my Mat 124 with no problems. I vaguely remember reading about a similar problem someone was having elsewhere online, and if I remember right it was due to a missing or bent internal piece, so that the lever wasn’t fully pushing as far as needed.
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 20:36 |
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President Beep posted:Just got around to watching this. You should be able to rotate the crank further, which will actually allow the cocking arm to complete its downward travel and then come back up again as you continue to turn the handle clockwise. The film winding crack itself? I don't think it can go any further. The video is a little inaccurate now, because once I put some tape on the empty film spool the crank now makes complete turns, however the internal arm still doesn't move the full distance. Unless I come up with something else, my current plan is to try putting some Sugru on some of the internal parts as a shim, because I can't think of anything else I could tightly secure on those tiny parts.
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Apr 5, 2019 01:27
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