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<p>Thanks for the quick replies!<br>

I've been using the repair manual to verify the S3 switch wiring. I tried following the disassembly guide and got as far as removing the front cover... I was hoping that I'd be able to see the circuit board from there but no such luck.<br>

Ah well. It was inexpensive and there are other XAs out there...<br>

Thanks again!</p>

<p>I just aquired an Olympus XA with a mode problem - it is 'stuck' in self-timer mode. I knew it had this problem when I bought it; I was hoping that the problem was simply a stuck / broken switch. Now that I have my hands on it though, I have determined that the problem is deeper...<br>

I've removed the bottom panel and verified that the switch contacts are working properly. I've also checked with a multimeter and verified that there are no shorts on the switch contacts.<br>

My tinkering skills are better-suited to electronics so I'm afraid (actually fairly certain) that if I try stripping this camera down till I can access it's electronic brains, there's no chance I'll get it back together in working order.<br>

Apart from the 12-second self-timer delay everything else seems to work correctly. The aperture works, the shutter speeds are sane, and the lens is clean and clear. <br>

Has anyone experienced this sort of failure? Any ideas on easy ways to fix it? I got the camera on the cheap (due to this problem) so I'm not going to invest a lot of $ to fix it. At worst, I'm prepared to chalk it up to a learning experience & start looking for one that is in full working order.<br>

Any tips or suggestions would be most welcome. Thanks & cheers!</p>

<p>So, not sure if the posts were being sarcastic or not, but I will assume they were. I've found plenty of posts / threads about repairing or working on the Minox 35 series shutter assemblies, but nothing about the viewfinder. I decided to go ahead and have another try, despite the lack of information.</p>

<p>The viewfinder is underneath and attached to the circuit board. There is a small screw to the right of the viewfinder which holds down that side; the left side is held down by a copper strip. There are lots of fine wires on the left hand side. The circuit board / viewfinder assembly can be lifted out and to the left, but this does not provide access to the viewfinder elements themselves.<br>

From what I could see, the elements slide down from above into the viewfinder body, and are all held in place by a piece of black (electrical?) tape. This is all inaccessable because the circuit board is mounted ontop of the piece of tape and I was not sure how to get the board off. My observation leads me to suspect that one has to disassemble the pivoting arm which detects if a flash is mounted, however, the small springs and c-clips made me unwilling to try.<br>

Ultimately, by using a fine scalpel and fine tweezers, it is possible to slice through the black tape that holds the front-most and rear-most viewfinder elements in position. These two elements may then be lifted out, as they are positioned ahead-of and to the rear of the circuit board.<br>

Inside there are two more optical components. The rear one is the reticle upon which are printed the corner marks and the exposure meter information. The front one, I don't know what it is for. It looks like coated glass, and doesn't seem to be a lens in any form.<br>

At any rate, I was able to clean both sides of the front and rear viewfinder elements, the rear of the reticle and the front of the coated piece. This seemed to be about 90% of the job; most of the clouding was on the rear of the reticle.<br>

To reassemble, I just dropped the two viewfinder elements back into place then used fresh electric tape, sliced into narrow strips, to exactly fit the tape I had removed.<br>

Getting the top of the camera back on was a bit of a hassle between the three little buttons, the shutter release, and the spring-loaded flash detector arm. <br>

Not including the time I took with the on-the-job-learning, I'd reckon it was about a 20 or 30 minute process to get all the way in, clean the viewfinder, then get out again.<br>

And hey, the camera still works!<br>

Cheers!</p>

<p>Right - and service people need service manuals, which is what I'm looking for. Or at least some tips, on how to get inside the viewfinder to clean it.<br>

I've had no problem doing this sort of work on other cameras; Rollei 35B; Zeiss Ikon Nettar; Canonet GIII QL17... It's just this Minox that I haven't been able to see an obvious way to get inside the viewfinder to clean it.<br>

Thanks!</p>

<p>A while back I found a used 35 GT (and the MF 35 ST flash) at a good price so I grabbed it. The camera appears to be in good working order, and I did run a roll of film through it at the time and was fairly pleased with it. The only thing that has kept me from using it more often is the viewfinder is quite cloudy...<br>

I know at one point I did open up the top of the camera and had a look inside but I couldn't see any obvious / easy way to get at the inside of the viewfinder's elements to clean them. After sitting on a shelf for the past year or so, I'd like to have another shot at putting this camera to good use.<br>

If anyone has any tips or suggestions, or maybe a step-by-step take-down or tech manual or something, it would be most appreciated.<br>

Thanks!</p>

<p>I was thinking about this, but rather than getting the real frosted glass, I had thought about getting a thin piece of acrylic then 'frosting' one side with some #1000 emery paper. Put the 'frosted' side facing inwards towards the pinhole, and it should approximate the position of the film... Maybe not perfect but perhaps a cheap DIY solution.</p>

<p>The Massive Dev Chart has some general / rule of thumb information about push processing:<br>

http://www.digitaltruth.com/devchart.php?doc=pushproc<br>

I've followed their numbers when I tried pushing film for the first time, and the results were IMHO perfect. I shot some APX100 at ISO400, developed in T-Max according to the dev chart with 2 stops compensation, and the negs came out perfectly.<br>

Cheers!</p>

<p>It's not thanksgiving up here, and I don't know if I'll get a chance to take many pictures, but I just loaded a roll of Shanghai GP3 in my Zeiss Ikon Nettar 517/16, and another roll of the same in my GS645. I don't know what age the GS645 is, but I figure being all-manual it's 'nearly' classic... it works without batteries, that's how I qualify it :)<br>

Less-classic and more alternative, I've also loaded a roll of very-expired Verichrome Pan in a Rollei A26 that I've been playing around with. <br>

Cheers!</p>

<p>They aren't fixed-focus, at least the latest ones aren't. You can actually see the wee lens moving in and out if you watch carefully.<br /> They do seem to be fixed aperture though, I did some tests in different lighting conditions and the Exif data shows the same aperture (f/2.8) each time. Only the shutter speed and effective ISO seem to vary. (According to the Exif data, the focal length is 3.85, for what it's worth.)<br /> I haven't looked through the SDK in a while, but even if the hardware could vary its aperture, there's no guarantee that Apple would open that function to the app developers; there are a lot of camera functions that remain off-limits.<br>

Edited to add: some googling seems to confirm that the aperture is fixed; only the ISO and shutter speed vary.</p>

<p>Great pictures Dani! Velvia is a great film, I'd heard the same thing about the vibrant colours and it doesn't dissapoint.<br>

I read somewhere that the 517/16 was introduced in 1949. Camerapedia maybe. <br>

The Nettar is a wonderful camera -- a great MF camera that fits in a jacket pocket or purse. :)</p>

<p>Hi Cintia, you're right a piece of a soda can works very well. Some people say it might be a bit too thick, but you can sand it down once it's flattened. That's what I'm using actually, I cut a little square of aluminum from a soda can and made a few different pinholes in that. It holds up better than foil. Tin foil is easier to work with though :)</p>

<p>Too many... the result of being a) single, b) obsessive compulsive, and c) always eager to try new things.</p>

<ol>

<li>Agfamatic 300 (shoots 126 film - the camera I'm using this week actually.)</li>

<li>Chaika II (Soviet half-frame 35mm)</li>

<li>Canonet GIII QL17</li>

<li>Canon EOS 450D (aka Rebel XSi - my only digital)</li>

<li>Canon EOS 3000</li>

<li>FED-5B</li>

<li>Fujica 35-SE</li>

<li>Fujica GS645</li>

<li>Hanimex RF35</li>

<li>Homemade 6x6 Pinhole Camera</li>

<li>Kodak X15 Instamatic</li>

<li>Holga</li>

<li>Minolta X-370</li>

<li>Minolta SRT 102</li>

<li>Rollei B35</li>

<li>Zeiss Ikon Nettar 517/16</li>

</ol>

<p>My faves so far are the Canonet and the Rollei B35. </p>

<p>There are some excellent pinhole exposure calculators online, you'll find several with a google search - from what you've described though it sounds to me like everything has been underexposed.<br /> The ones that are completely transparent being essentially unexposed, and the ones with just a black circle are, I think, indicative of being both under exposed and problems with the pinhole. It's possible your pinhole is too small in diameter but too thick in cross-section.<br /> I'd suggest giving it another try, but instead of making a pinhole in the cardboard, punch a larger hole in the cardboard, then cover it over with a bit of tinfoil. Make your pinhole in the tinfoil, then use an exposure calculator to calculate the correct exposure times.<br /> Also - if you have a scanner that can scan negatives, you can measure your pinhole with it. Put the tinfoil with your pinhole on the scanner and scan it as a black and white negative, using a high resolution like 2400 dpi for instance. Then using something like photoshop or gimp or any other image manipulation program, you can select the pinhole and find out what size it is. I was able to use this method to exactly determine the size of the pinholes I had made (and you can get a good look at how they are shaped / how clean they are too.)<br>

Edited to add: for exposure, a 0.3mm pinhole and a 25mm 'focal length' works out to an aperture of roughly f/83. If your using ISO 100 film, then a bright sunny day at EV15 would require about a 1/5 second exposure. By comparison, being indoors with moderate indoor lighting (EV5), with ISO 100 film, you'd be looking at more like 3 minutes, 20 seconds of exposure - and that doesn't account for reciprocity failure. Somewhere in between, like outside under an overcast sky (EV10) would be about 6 seconds, again with ISO 100 film.<br>

Good luck!</p>

<p>I've been liking my Rollei B35 for being small, fast and discrete. It has a selenium meter on it but generally I just set the shutter speed and aperture by 'sunny 16' before I start, and set the focus at 6m if I'm outside, or 2m if I'm indoors. With the aperture at f/8 or smaller, depth of field keeps most things in focus. If you do need to refocus, the lens is well marked with distance ranges. The shutter is very quiet as well.</p>

<p>That's a good point too - when I start a roll of 120 in any camera, I make sure it's winding tightly before closing up the back. </p>

<p>Maybe best to keep it here since it's ontopic to this thread.<br>

<img src="http://static.photo.net/attachments/bboard/00U/00UxOO-188379584.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="534" /><br>

The two flat spring things need to be pulled outwards slightly, so they are more into where the film goes. I do this before I load either the film reel or the takeup spool. They are very stiff but I just get the tip of my finger behind them and give a little pull to try and get them more in the 'way' so they are actually pressing on the spools.</p>

<p>The take-up spool one won't touch to start with but I think they work in tandem, i.e. the one on the right applies tension to the film spool at the begining, then towards the latter half of the roll the one on the left starts applying tension to the takeup spool as it gets more filled. If both sides are somewhat loose though, you wind up with the problem of the film too-loose on the spool.</p>

<p>Hi Dani - I just posted a reply in the other Nettar thread - I didn't see this one.</p>

<p>Hi Dani, sorry to hear of all the trouble you're having. I noticed a similar problem with my Nettar when I took my first roll, that it was very loose on the take-up spool. I had some light-blooms on the film from that, but fortunately it wasn't too serious and only affected the last few frames.</p>

<p>There are two flat metal springs, one in each side where the spools go, which are supposed to provide tension to keep the film tight. I found that before loading film, I had to apply some finger pressure to those springs to sort of 'bend' them a bit so they would make contact with the film and help keep it under tension. Not too much mind you - but just enough that the film isn't loose going from one side to the other.</p>

<p>I've attached a photo pointing to the two spring things in question.</p><div></div>

<p>Cintia, I'd guess that the hole you made is perhaps not ideal? What I have read is that the material of the pinhole must be very very thin, so if you made it in cardboard or thck paper, it might be too thick to perform well. Perhaps you could put a piece of tinfoil there and make a small hole in that?</p>

<p>Also, how did you calculate your exposure times? There are some different pinhole calculators on the internet, you just need to know the focal length (distance from the pinhole to the film) and the size of the hole. And then you need to account for reciprocity failure, which varies from film to film.</p>

<p>From how you've described your camera, it ought to work assuming the actual pinhole construction and the exposure time are right.</p>

<p>I honestly don't remember why I signed on for that first photography course back when I was about 14. I suspect though, there was a certain allure to the whole 'playing with chemicals' aspect.</p>

<p>Some 25 years later, playing with chemicals is still a big part of photography for me! :)</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I recently wrote up a little blog post on the subject of Lomography; <a href="http://planetstephanie.net/2009/11/01/good-bad-or-fugly/">good bad or fugly</a>.<br>

Readers digest version: Art is in the eye of the beholder. The lomo 'movement' probably started out with good ideals but has been taken over by marketing and money-making - Holgas, Dianas, LC-As and their ilk are very much over-priced - the 'brand' and 'movement' have 'sold out' as it were.<br>

Ultimately, 'art' is what the artist and the audience say it is. Badly framed, poorly focused, incorrectly exposed pictures might prove interesting now and then. These results can be accomplished without paying inflated prices to buy into a 'movement' and 'brand' however.<br>

I do have a Holga, but after a few rolls the novelty wore off and I boxed it. I paid less money for a 60 year old classic Zeiss Ikon Nettar folding MF camera, that can do everything the Holga can, plus it can also take excellent photos when I want too. And I don't have to worry about it falling apart unexpectedly.</p>