So this is why they say don't take your camera apart...

<p><img src="http://i306.photobucket.com/albums/nn279/robertscrivener/IMG_9339rsz-1.jpg" alt="" /></p>

<p>Petri 45mm f/1.8 ranefinder, made in Japan.<br>

Oil on the shutter.<br>

After destroying everything, I found out that the lens retaining ring unscrews, then the lens unscrews, then I have complete access the the iris and shutter blades.<br>

Oh well. It didn't work anyway.<br>

Anyone else?</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Great shot. Kind of a Deja-Vu for me, on several occasions. I was never brave enough to photograph my mistakes though. Just bury them in the trash. "What new camera Honey?"</p>

<p>Yeah i have at least 3 cameras that I tried to fix...never to be put back together again.</p>

<p><strong><em>Note to self:</em> </strong><br>

Keep little screwdrivers and tweezers <em>away</em> from cameras...</p>

<p>Oh I should try this on my Canon SD1000, which enjoyed a nice experience of going through a cycle in my washer and now refuses to click. May be I can make it work again. (LOL!)</p>

Thanks for the picture, Robert, it made my day. That is funny!.

<p>I was successfully in taking apart an old Leica and reassembling it ... almost:<br>

When I was a student at UC Berkeley, many years ago, my aunt and uncle visited from Argentina. My uncle had with him his usual camera, an already very old Leica IIIb. The shutter had stopped firing. He didn't expect to be in any one city long enough to get it repaired. We both had technical training although not with cameras. He was a civil engineer, I was working on a graduate degree in the acoustics of speech, and yet we decided to try to repair his Leica. We started to take it apart, made notes as we went, kept each set of screws in a different receptacle with a note as to where they belonged. We finally found the problem -- a piece of film leader had broken off and gotten stuck inside the shutter folds. We reassembled the camera, and it seemed to work properly ...<br>

There was a problem, however. Never having done such a thing before, we didn't know to check the cloth shutter for pin holes that might have arisen because of the sharp film edges. The rest of my uncle's photographs of the trip showed fogging, and he learned of the pin holes. He bought another camera and put the Leica on a shelf. His son, my cousin, now has it on his shelf, unless it's been give to one of his children or grandchildren since my last visit.</p>

<p>Don't try to fix your own teeth, either. No pix, please, if you do.</p>

<p>I recommend next time you use a pair of Vise-Grips. It will go a lot faster that way.</p>

<p>Your results are the stuff of my nightmares, and the reason I don't try to disassemble my cameras, no matter how old or in whatever condition (I have a couple that could use some work, but that's the way it goes, I'm not sending them to you).</p>

<p>Encase all that stuff in a Lucite block and keep it on your desk as a reminder. I saw this on the front desk of a camera repair shop years ago....along with a card that read "So you want to try a DIY camera repair?"</p>

<p>Never tried that with a camera but I tried that with a motorcycle once. It did not end well.</p>

<p>I had one of those Petris, almost exactly like that. Mine looked just about like the picture after I had at it too. If it's any comfort, finding out how to get at the iris and shutter blades first did not help, and somehow the end result was the same anyway.</p>

<p>I've done better on some others, but I still have a Kodak Stereo in a bag awaiting the day I am brave enough to make a second try at getting the shutter back together.</p>

Everybody who succesfully repairs cameras started like this. Do 5 or 6 more, then one of them will go back together properly and you'll feel like a genius. And you'll have a box full of useful spare parts!

<p>not that i've ever attempted a camera, but is there a worse feeling than having a leftover part(S) after a repair of something complex and expensive?....</p>

<p>Why pay $50 bucks for a repair you can do with a butter knife? To avoid causing a $500 repair!</p>

<p>Robert -<br>

The problem is immediately obvious. The two screws circled in red are extraneous and put in the camera by Petri to confuse DIY repair guys and gals. (Petri is a rare slang word in Vladivostok that translates to "haha") I've come across this damnable conspiracy myself, countless times ... with my dead cameras, dead car engines, dead clocks and dead lawn mowers. Here's the scam - they put these parts in and let the devices work, for a little while. When you take them apart and discover the ruse, some sort of government conspiracy voodoo happens and the machine becomes DOA. It's a madhouse I say, a MADHOUSE!<br>

I also always wear my aluminum foil cap while working on these things.<br>

Jim "I hear voices" Momary</p><div></div>

<p>Lol. Jim I feel that way sometimes... Someone asked me to look at his digital P&S a few days ago for a jammed lens, and I told him it was most likely dead but I'd look at it and see.<br>

After I shocked myself three times on the capacitor terminals, I decided I couldn't fix the camera and put it back together. The conspirators included an extra spring, a tiny piece of important-looking-but-clearly-useless metal, and a screw inside the camera. I never noticed them until I put everything back together. Sheesh. Good thing the camera was dead to begin with :)</p>

<p>I did find some very cool things about the Petri rangefinder, though. The translucent textured ring on the front of the lens is actually a diffuser for a photoconductor that circles around the front of the lens. You can see part of it in the lower-right-hand corner of the pic - it's a brownish PC board looking thing. Anyway the photoconductor has wires that lead back to the rangefinder meter box. The voltage on the photoconductor wires moves the meter needle back and forth.<br>

Thought that was a very unique way of gathering metering information. I'd always thought the CdS cell was in the camera body beside the lens, like on my Yashica GSN Electro 35.<br>

The complexity of the lens was incredible (Ha, was..). It looked like the inside of a fine mechanical watch and had at least twenty micro gears all around the barrel. Maybe more. The actual body is very simple.. Mechanical film winding/shutter recocking accomplished by seven gears and three levers; one coupling lever for the rangefinder assembly, and a film rewind knob.</p>

<p>After reading about all the people on the forums who want to take apart perfectly repairable lenses and cameras, I'm afraid to buy anything used any more. Usually I don't let my "work bench" get this cluttered. I throw it all in a bag to get rid of the evidence.</p>

<p>Yes...a black plastic bag is the answer to all problems like this. Never fails.</p>

<p>That's how you get a collection of spare parts!</p>

If I learned one thing from trying to do my own camera repair it is, never take a camera apart on a shag rug.

Remember the old saying: "You repair things with tools, you fix things with a HAMMER!

<p>Another EBAY "AS IS".</p>

<p>One of my old bosses used to have a poster of photographic truths, and one of them was "you can fix a camera with a butter knife that a camera store will cost you 50 dollars to do" followed by "a camera store will charge you 50 dollars to repair a camera that was fixed with a butter knife". my paraphrased gets a little rougher as the years go by, but you get the gist. </p>

<p>Sign in an electronics repair shop (modified for this thread):</p>

<p>Camera Repair: $30/hr.<br>

If you Watch: $40/hr.<br>

If you Help: $50/hr.<br>

If you Worked on it First: $60/hr.</p>