John Seaman

Good information Niels. It's good to get the facts from someone who has actually carried this out, not the usual internet speculation.

The Reflekta was made around 1950 by VEB Welta-Kamera-Werk. My somewhat basic version has a ROW Pololyt f3.5 75mm coated triplet lens, in a GW Blitz I everset two blade leaf shutter with speeds of 1/100, 1/50, 1/25 and B. Film advance is by red window with no double exposure prevention. There is a flash socket but no self timer. There is no magnifier in the viewing hood, and no sports finder. Yes, it is pretty basic but perfectly usable. The seller said he could not move the focusing lever under the lens. Google soon told me that it's a common problem with these, due to dried out grease. Sure enough when it came, the lever was very stiff but just about movable. There are internet descriptions of the major tear town needed to clean and re-lube to rectify this. Hmm, perhaps there's another way. With the focus racked out, it's just possible to see the start of the focus helix through the gap at the bottom of the lens. I sprayed a little lubricant on to this, fortunately it didn't get on the shutter. And it came a bit looser. And looking through the back, a few threads of the helix are visible (arrowed in picture). I worked in a couple of drops of light oil. Now the focus is smooth and pleasantly light. But please, resort my crude methods at your own risk! A worse problem was the mirror, or what was left of it. The hood is removed via six screws, four at the sides, two at the back (the two front screws just secure the nameplate and don't need removing). The silvered 50mm square mirror was obviously FUBAR. Now a while back I took out the front aluminised mirror from an old instant camera. I've never had much success cutting glass, but with a little care and a lot of luck, I cut the new mirror to size and slotted it in - it's almost exactly the same thickness as the old one so focus is OK. Now the view is as bright as it gets with a plain ground glass screen. The Reflekta yielded one small surprise, it has travelled!. The retailers label in the body was tiny and the only way I could read it was to use a macro lens. It reads: Tall's Camera Supply, 1409 FIFTH AVENUE, SEATTLE, WASH. That's it, thanks for looking. Please don't expect pictures from this camera, I'm just not doing film photography nowadays.

Man and Bhoy (the dog's name)

I just realised from the title of your post that you already know about the Rapid system. My bad.

No real experience of using these, I had a camera and a few cassettes a while back but never put a film through. If I recall correctly, the system works by the film being pushed into the receiving cassette by the sprocket wheel. So once the tail end of the film passes the sprocket, the film advance stops, leaving a short tail of film. The pushing action can only support a relatively short length of film, hence some Karat cameras were square format to enable more frames to be packed in. The system was briefly resurrected post war and renamed Rapid, which had the same cassettes but with a method of communicating the film speed to the camera. It was adopted by a number of Japanese makers like Minolta. And Mark, welcome to the Classic Camera forum.

Hope you have a backup. Good luck.

Welcome to the site. I too am very keen on classic cameras but to do serious photography you really need to look to acquiring more capable and up to date equipment. The Argos cameras are iconic (hate the word) but very limited and by current standards, very awkward to use. You also have to decide whether toconcentrate on 35mm or on medium format, each having their advantages and disadvantages. Whatever happens, good luck and don't hesitate to ask more specific questions and to post your results on photo.net, you can request advice in the Seeking Critique forum.

Yes, it should be usable. i had one of these briefly, with a similar problem, which could not be corrected. If I recall correctly, there are five mechanical shutter speeds from 1/60 to 1/1000 which work without batteries. So you can set the exposure manually. There's an old photo.net article about it here:

Ricoh Auto 66 TLR

The mount of the Komura can't be identified from the picture, however if it's not a Canon mount it's very unlikely that an adaptor is available. It would make much more sense to look for some nice Canon FD lenses, like the 50mm F/1.8, they can be found quite cheaply these days.

The 7000 works fine with rechargeables. Actually there were two battery holders, one for AAA's and one for AA's. I think the OP's camera has the one for AAA's which is slimmer,