Romney Publishing

ARE THERE REALLY TRADE SECRETS OF CAMERA REPAIR?

Yes, Really!...The old time repairman was trained by an apprenticeship system. He worked under a master camera repairman and he took an oath never to reveal what he had learned from the master. The secrecy was so great that when a man knew how to work on a really difficult camera, such as a Contax, he would not let anyone else near him while he worked...even other repairmen! Later many repair people were trained in correspondence courses which were very expensive, several thousand dollars.
The students had to sign an oath never to reveal anything they learned in these courses too. I decided to reveal the Trade Secrets of Camera Repair because I felt that secrecy didn't help the camera business. I had never been an apprentice or signed an oath so I could do this with no problem.
All these trade secrets are in my REVISED BASIC TRAINING IN CAMERA REPAIR and some are printed below. They are not in my advanced texts for specific cameras and they are not in the repair manuals provided by the manufacturer, or those written by others. My BASIC TEXT also includes exclusive methods and secrets devised by me to make camera repair practical for amateurs without buying costly test equipment. For example I show you how to use a TV set screen to test shutter speeds and how to use another camera with a long lens to collimate lenses and make them focus accurately.
Unfortunately, there have been a lot of failures when a person tries to fix a camera without first studying my BASIC TRAINING book. I strongly advise against it.
I am glad I revealed the trade secrets of camera repair, particularly now that the original repairmen are very old or dead, and these valuable secrets could have been lost forever.


What are the trade secrets of camera repair?

Here are a few of them, briefly:

  1. Few cameras need parts. Usually a part can be filed or bent to fit.
  2. Most cameras that are jammed can be flush cleaned easily without taking them apart completely. A plate or cover is removed and trichloroethylene solvent is sprayed on the moving parts.
  3. Most failures in electronic cameras and exposure meters are simply bad contacts in battery boxes or switches. They can be fixed easily with our contact cleaning brush with no great technical knowledge.
  4. Most camera SLR mirrors are easily removed with tweezers and replaced without taking the camera apart.
  5. Camera makers conceal the screws used to take them apart under leather. Peel it back to expose the screws. Sometimes glued-on shiny plates conceal the screws. Cameras often use a ring without slots. It is removed with a clamp wrench or auto hose clamp covered with tape .
  6. Never oil a camera heavily. Camera oil is very thin special watch oil. We sell it.
  7. Parts for cameras are not hard to find. Get them off junk cameras. Many parts are interchangeable between different makes of camera.


    8. Of course there is a little more to these trade secrets than we can present here. You really need our REVISED BASIC TRAINING IN CAMERA REPAIR TEXT even if you have bought texts on camera repair by other authors. Otherwise you will simply become confused.
    You need to look at my website frequently and maybe print it out. It is often updated with new material, and from time to time older information is removed.

 

ROMNEY DEALER TEXT

To learn how to make money as a mail order used camera dealer, order our well-known Romney Dealer Text, ISBN 886996-59-8. for $29. The first 1977 edition of this book accurately predicted which used and classic cameras would be valuable. People who bought the book back then made a lot of money. We think people who buy the new 2001 revision of the DEALER TEXT will make a lot of money in the coming years too.

 

SOME VERY GOOD CAMERAS TO BUY.....

Point and Shoot Cameras: Discontinued Olympus XA is an excellent pro-grade small camera. Among low cost new autofocus point and shoot cameras, Pentax IQ Zoom 928 is outstanding. Canon Shur-Shots and Minolta are good too. Point and Shoots are not comparable to professional grade 35mm cameras. The cameras are preferred by people lacking a technical background. Advantix cameras will replace 110 format, not 35mm. Few current low priced digital cameras are as good as a Polaroid 600.
35mm Cameras: All Leica rangefinder cameras are very fine, even if old. The more recent lenses for them are preferable.
Among 35mm single lens reflexes, Pentax K1000, Spotmatic, and equivalent screw mount cameras by other makers, Olympus OM-1 and OM-2, Minolta SRT series, Canon FT, FTb, AE-1, Nikormat, Nikon FTN, F2, FG and FM in good condition are the best bets for the careful worker. The bodies are readily available for between $35 and $200.
Canon F-1, EOS, Nikon F3, F4, and F5 are well liked, if you can spend a lot of money or need to shoot rapidly.
Medium and Large Format Cameras: Remember, a low cost medium or large format camera will take sharper pictures than any 35mm! Consider buying a used Yashicamat 124-G twin lens reflex for fine work. It is competitive with the best. Any Rolleiflex TLR, Mamiya C330 with the recent "Super" lenses, M645, RB67, Pentax 6 X 7, Super Ikonta A or C, or even a 2x3 or 4x5 Speed or Crown Graphic are still good cameras. Older view lenses can be very good. Russian lenses for Leica and Zenit are outstanding. So are most EastGerman Zeiss SLR lenses. Hasselblad is very fine, but expensive too. It is not user friendly. The focal plane shutter found in some Hasselblad models is delicate.

 

HOW WELL SHOULD A GOOD CAMERA PERFORM!

You need about 40 lines per mm resolution at the corners of the frame and 60 or more lines at the center for serious professional 35 mm photography today. Here is a test that shows what you can realistically expect in the field from a good camera today.

Click on these photos to enlarge them

The small picture is a 100x enlargement of the tiny image of the man in the corner of the 35mm negative I took. On the negative, he is 0.7mm tall. He is 70mm tall in the print I made. He will be enlarged 100x if you have a large monitor screen. With a smaller screen, he will be smaller. The camera I used was a 1930's Leica IIIA with a 1950's Jupiter F2 50mm lens. It was overhauled by me using the methods in my books. Most really good cameras from the 1950's or later should do as well. If not, they have probably been damaged by careless CLA or a bump or a fall. Age has little to do with the performance of a camera. We publish a text on evaluating and testing lenses with a fine test chart that will help you.


WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH A $15 CAMERA?



Click on the photo to enlarge it


This photo was taken in 1999 with an Argus A camera I bought for $15.
It was cleaned, lubricated, adjusted, and collimated using the methods in
my Revised Basic Training book. It has an F4.5 anastigmat lens and 1/200
second shutter. I snapped the old car at 1/25 sec at F9.5 on TMAX film.
This Argus originally sold for $10 in 1939. The car is a local 1948
Pontiac, still in use too. The picture is not quite as sharp as the one of
the river above, made with a Leica. However it is quite adequate for many
applications. The Argus is still a practical camera for people who can
handle F stops and apertures.

HOW TO TAKE PICTURES LIKE THESE WITH OLDER CAMERAS
First, you need to shoot at 1/200 second or faster or use a sturdy tripod.
The picture of the old car was shot with a tripod.

Next, remember that slower films are sharper. Kodak TMAX, Kodachrome and
the slower Fuji films are excellent. Often commercial lab prints are
unsharp, and scanning from prints is not a good idea. I use the Polaroid
Sprint Scan. You can also have a lab scan your negative or slide.

Over exposure of BW film reduces definition greatly. So does a dirty or
cloudy lens. You need a lens shade. Yellow filters improve many BW images.
Coating a lens is not particularly important. Lenses are usually sharpest
between F8 and F11.

Many cameras are not properly collimated. They do not focus at the
distance they are set to. Sometime the lens elements are loose or put
together wrong with a previous repair. Roll film may bulge due to the
design of the camera or roll back. You can correct these problems.

Contrasty light in early morning or late afternoon on a clear day after a
storm gives very sharp pictures. A day with bright sun, but many clouds in
the sky, gives rich full lighting of people. Indoor flash lighting is much
sharper if it comes from strobes at both sides of the subject. I have had
customers buy a very fine lens such as a Zeiss Planar and shoot only at
noon or on cloudy days, or with flash right on the camera, and wonder why their
pictures did not look like those of Ansel Adams!


To see some beautiful pictures and learn about Pictorialism and Bromoil click here.


Related Web Sites

Mr. Tak Kubo of Japan has a fine CLASSIC CAMERA web page(http://www.cosmonet.org) with more pictures made with old cameras that you will like. He is also an international web page developer and he helped me with this page.He did all the html work for me, designed the unique automatic order form and set up the pictures so they would enlarge when clicked on. He did all this work from Japan. Why not have him design a unique web page for you that will be attractive, quick to load, and easy to use? E mail to Mr Kubo at cosmo@cosmonet.org.

For valuable consumer information on which camera stores are good, and which are not so good, click here.
A GOOD CAMERA REPAIR LINK is ((S.K. Grimes)) who does difficult repairs well. He can mount old lenses in new shutters and do custom machining. To buy foam material and instructions to making foam camera light seals go to http://www.cameraseals.com.
Ed Romney has recently completed a new book , LIVING WELL ON PRACTICALLY NOTHING, REVISED AND UPDATED. It has many money saving ideas and is extensively illustrated with photos taken by his older cameras. In it, his repair techniques are applied to cars and to many other appliances and mechanisms. To learn more about the book click here.

Sorry, Romney does no more repairs for the public, so as not to compete with his students. He does not estimate repairs nor appraise cameras. No camera parts or owners manuals are stocked.

 



Romney Box 487 DRAYTON SC 29333

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