Kowa SE
I'm getting a little fanatical about cameras of late and i think iv said this before, no only do i like taking photos i love to use the camera. I cant help but get a little bit excited knowing how all the very finely crafted parts in these machines work and how they go together. I suppose that comes from my engineering days and still lingers there as i find myself buying old duff cameras and fixing them. One that i finished before Christmas was this Kowa SE with a fixed 50mm lens its a tidy bit of kit. When i bought it for a very reasonable price of 5 knicker its had a stuck shutter and unlike my last camera i couldn't find any guides for it anywhere until i found this guy on Flickr who has an immense collection of cameras and had a similar model he had dismantled and kindly sent me the sketches he made while putting it back together. This helped ALOT as when i opened this one up it totally blew my mind and took a good week before i figured it all out and fixed the problem, then came the task of putting it back together. Check out the pics. once it was don it was time to load it up with film and try it out. the first batch didn't turn out great and partly down to using dodgy chemicals so i tried again and the results were beyond what i had expected.
This was the sticky mirror action
This is the shutter, you cant imagine how complex this actually is and so very small.
This took me two whole nights at assembling the shutter back to the camera body, loads of little springs and alot of swearing. in fact i was half cut when i finally got it right.
Job done
A few shots using out of datefile thjat was crossed processed in work.
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
6 comments:
good stuff! you do know I'm going to find you loads more shit to do now don't you?
I just wouldn't have the patience for that (also no skills, no brain, no engineering background) that's all!
you know part of it is knowing that i only spent a tiny amount of money on the camera so it dosent matter if it goes wrong its just a learning experience. If it was expensive i would seriously have tostop myself through fear of wasting money.
love your blog! pls follow and visit my blog :)
http://remnantofmemories.blogspot.com/
Hi, Bought a Kowa E at a bot fair yesterday for a fiver, loving the solidity and 60s style of it. It works fine on B setting but on the other settings although the shutter seems to fire, the flap or whatever you call it nearest the film doesn't move. Any idea how or who might be able to fix it?
Alastair
Hey, do you still have those sketches? My mail is pszaglaw@gmail.com thx in advance. Im stuck with repairing my Kowa seR.
Post a Comment