henry_finley1

2nd photo

Although my Medalist II is in excellent condition, I can't really use it right now until I work out a problem. First, allow me to say up front that I know how to work on cameras very well, just no experience on these. The problem is that both the action of the cocking lever below the viewfinder, and the shutter release action are both very stiff. When I move the sync lever down to the M position, it's not quite as stiff, but still this problem needs to be remedied.But this fact gives me clue that the stiffness is actually in the shutter and not the camera body linkage. In the first photo, what is the ring with the purple arrow? On the second photo is a screenshot of the service manual telling how to remove the shutter. But I find it a bit confusing. In the 3rd photo with the red arrow, is this the ring that the service manual is talking about? I ask this because I don't see what that had to to with actually getting the shutter off the end of the focus tube. The order of the photos got shifted. Sorry

I have been tricked before by a Nikkormat with a corroded battery wire leading from the battery chamber. There was no obvious corrosion; everything looked clean as a whistle. Upon extremely close inspection I noticed a speck of green where the battery wire soldered to the battery box. I removed that wire and out of curiosity, stripped the wire back about an inch. I discovered the stranded wire had actually wicked corrosion up the length of the wire like a candle wick. But because it was inside it's insulation, the wire looked beautiful. That wicked corrosion had attacked the copper strands so badly, the wire had no conductivity at all. So I replaced what appeared to be a beautiful wire and the problem was solved. So now I know--stranded wire can act just like a candle wick to battery corrosion, whereas everything looks clean and pretty to the eye.

Thank you orsetto. It is obvious your expertise is greater than mine.

Barring the good suggestions mentioned above being the problem, I suspect the bias potentiometer in the finder head may be a wee set a wee bit low. Any tarnishing of contacts being enough to drop just enough power for LED cutoff. I have discovered turning up the bias from its extreme lowest position to a certain point causes the LED's to light. Turning it up too far causes them to be too sensitive to f stop settings to the point where you can't get both of them to light at the same time unless the aperture ring isn't set absolutely perfectly. Obviously I am talking about the DP2 finder. I understand the DP3 and DP12 used a different LED arrangement from DP2's two inward pointing arrows. But speculation suggests they have bias pots also.

Don't use a pencil eraser. If anything common sense would dictate that it may even deposit a rubber residue, but that's just my speculation. And yes I have had the same problem on a DP2 finder, somewhat regularly. I found that the 2 contacts on top of the camera were the offenders. I would regularly have to use a q tip and 99% isopropyl to remedy it. But it always recurred. I think the biggest problem is that with age, a tarnish had developed on all contact surfaces. I found that 1200 grit wet or dry sandpaper on all contacts gave the longest lasting remedy. One of the body top contacts has a plastic shroud around it, so be careful with sandpaper. If you opt for an eraser, perhaps one of the old style abrasive typewriter erasers would do better than a plain pencil eraser. What I've said goes for the battery compartment contacts also. In the end, I found the DP2 to be a finder where I was just going to have to live with this problem. Perhaps the bias potentiometer may need a little tweeking from factory setting. But I don't advise fooling with that. Not being experienced, you may find that applying a fine screwdriver to the pot adjusting screw bends back the potentiometer, risking breaking the fine wires that serves as its mount.

Well I guess the saga is over. I did fiddle with all those pots one at a time. Only 1 had any effect, which was to shut off the LED's. The finder works basically and is quite accurate; at least from bright sunshine down to EV3 at ASA 200. Below that, the accuracy goes to heck. So I guess one or both CdS cells has lost tolerance. I don't see any point in doing anything but buttoning up the project and calling it done. No use throwing good money after bad. It's in terrible shape, and some mighty inept repair work has obviously been done in it before I got it.

Actually I've gotten this DP2 working, but I need to adjust the potentiometers and there's a total of 6 of them. I hate the idea of experimenting with that. If it was 2 or 3 or even 4 I would. But not 6. Thank you.

repost. Still looking for Nikon DP-2 repair manual. Thank you

Thank you. No repair manual there on this.

Hello. Does anybody have the service/repair manual for the Nikon DP-2 finder as used on the Nikon F2S camera? Thank you.

Update: I've ordered 2 different circuit boards from the chinese distributor linked above. Hopefully I can figure out something that will get this idea off the ground. I've already discovered that if I go the 9V route that the batteries will have to be cut open and the metal case discarded. 9V batteries are a tad thicker than the 22 1/2V ones and don't quite fit the battery bay of the camera. No big deal. I'll report later. It will probably be a while for that slow boat from China to get the boards here.

I have not idea why this posted so many times. The screen kept freezing, and it was not my computer at fault. I didn't even get to post my attachments. There are 4 of them and this site won't let me post but 1 attachment per post. So I have to make 3 more posts so everybody will have everything they need to help answer. This site isn't what it used to be.

I didn't expect to get this far on this site with my initial question. Now that we've reached this far, I have some items to post that should give better minds than mine enough to help. As it is now, with the camera still assembled it's obviously not possible to completely plan the project. But I have a mental image of what needs to go where. So right now, I'm thinking about a single 9V battery, and the circuit repeated in this link: DC-DC Boost Step up Converter 3~35V To 5V~40V 9V 12V 24V 36V Power Supply Module | eBay Now what I need is an idea of how to give the circuit the needed capacity to kick the solenoid. I don't think it can be done with the little circuit board alone. Obviously the original Graflex capacitors (and resistors) will need to be swapped out with new parts. But what parts, and how do I wire this Chinese-made circuit board to them? One last think--I intend to install a switch so that everything is totally dead till I pick up the camera to use it. See attachments. Thank you.

I didn't expect to get this far on this site with my initial question. Now that we've reached this far, I have some items to post that should give better minds than mine enough to help. As it is now, with the camera still assembled it's obviously not possible to completely plan the project. But I have a mental image of what needs to go where. So right now, I'm thinking about a single 9V battery, and the circuit repeated in this link: DC-DC Boost Step up Converter 3~35V To 5V~40V 9V 12V 24V 36V Power Supply Module | eBay Now what I need is an idea of how to give the circuit the needed capacity to kick the solenoid. I don't think it can be done with the little circuit board alone. Obviously the original Graflex capacitors (and resistors) will need to be swapped out with new parts. But what parts, and how do I wire this Chinese-made circuit board to them? One last think--I intend to install a switch so that everything is totally dead till I pick up the camera to use it. See attachments. Thank you.

I didn't expect to get this far on this site with my initial question. Now that we've reached this far, I have some items to post that should give better minds than mine enough to help. As it is now, with the camera still assembled it's obviously not possible to completely plan the project. But I have a mental image of what needs to go where. So right now, I'm thinking about a single 9V battery, and the circuit repeated in this link: DC-DC Boost Step up Converter 3~35V To 5V~40V 9V 12V 24V 36V Power Supply Module | eBay Now what I need is an idea of how to give the circuit the needed capacity to kick the solenoid. I don't think it can be done with the little circuit board alone. Obviously the original Graflex capacitors (and resistors) will need to be swapped out with new parts. But what parts, and how do I wire this Chinese-made circuit board to them? One last think--I intend to install a switch so that everything is totally dead till I pick up the camera to use it. See attachments. Thank you.

I didn't expect to get this far on this site with my initial question. Now that we've reached this far, I have some items to post that should give better minds than mine enough to help. As it is now, with the camera still assembled it's obviously not possible to completely plan the project. But I have a mental image of what needs to go where. So right now, I'm thinking about a single 9V battery, and the circuit repeated in this link: DC-DC Boost Step up Converter 3~35V To 5V~40V 9V 12V 24V 36V Power Supply Module | eBay Now what I need is an idea of how to give the circuit the needed capacity to kick the solenoid. I don't think it can be done with the little circuit board alone. Obviously the original Graflex capacitors (and resistors) will need to be swapped out with new parts. But what parts, and how do I wire this Chinese-made circuit board to them? One last think--I intend to install a switch so that everything is totally dead till I pick up the camera to use it. See attachments. Thank you.

I didn't expect to get this far on this site with my initial question. Now that we've reached this far, I have some items to post that should give better minds than mine enough to help. As it is now, with the camera still assembled it's obviously not possible to completely plan the project. But I have a mental image of what needs to go where. So right now, I'm thinking about a single 9V battery, and the circuit repeated in this link: DC-DC Boost Step up Converter 3~35V To 5V~40V 9V 12V 24V 36V Power Supply Module | eBay Now what I need is an idea of how to give the circuit the needed capacity to kick the solenoid. I don't think it can be done with the little circuit board alone. Obviously the original Graflex capacitors (and resistors) will need to be swapped out with new parts. But what parts, and how do I wire this Chinese-made circuit board to them? One last think--I intend to install a switch so that everything is totally dead till I pick up the camera to use it. See attachments. Thank you.

I didn't expect to get this far on this site with my initial question. Now that we've reached this far, I have some items to post that should give better minds than mine enough to help. As it is now, with the camera still assembled it's obviously not possible to completely plan the project. But I have a mental image of what needs to go where. So right now, I'm thinking about a single 9V battery, and the circuit repeated in this link: DC-DC Boost Step up Converter 3~35V To 5V~40V 9V 12V 24V 36V Power Supply Module | eBay Now what I need is an idea of how to give the circuit the needed capacity to kick the solenoid. I don't think it can be done with the little circuit board alone. Obviously the original Graflex capacitors (and resistors) will need to be swapped out with new parts. But what parts, and how do I wire this Chinese-made circuit board to them? One last think--I intend to install a switch so that everything is totally dead till I pick up the camera to use it. See attachments. Thank you.

I didn't expect to get this far on this site with my initial question. Now that we've reached this far, I have some items to post that should give better minds than mine enough to help. As it is now, with the camera still assembled it's obviously not possible to completely plan the project. But I have a mental image of what needs to go where. So right now, I'm thinking about a single 9V battery, and the circuit repeated in this link: DC-DC Boost Step up Converter 3~35V To 5V~40V 9V 12V 24V 36V Power Supply Module | eBay Now what I need is an idea of how to give the circuit the needed capacity to kick the solenoid. I don't think it can be done with the little circuit board alone. Obviously the original Graflex capacitors (and resistors) will need to be swapped out with new parts. But what parts, and how do I wire this Chinese-made circuit board to them? One last think--I intend to install a switch so that everything is totally dead till I pick up the camera to use it. See attachments. Thank you.

Steve m's post led to a site with quite a number of little circuits. Although not the item he referenced, I did glom onto this item (in link). I wonder what the dimensions of this are. The original circuit was 2-22 1/2 volt batteries in a simple capacitor circuit designed to zap a solenoid to trip a shutter. How much amperage could this require? Certainly not enough to burn up this board, could it?. The part I'm not looking forward to is disassembling this Super Graphic again. This is one camera you can't experiment on without some extensive disassembly. It's been several years since I was inside this camera. I'm not sure exactly how much space I have to deal with once the old electronics are removed. DC-DC Boost Step up Converter 3~35V To 5V~40V 9V 12V 24V 36V Power Supply Module | eBay

I didn't get notifications on a good many of these posts. Checked in because of another matter actually. But as long as I see these new posts, I had already discounted any external pack idea. It's one of the 2 things I stipilated to myself when conceiving the idea: 1) no defacing of the camera, 2) no external pack ideas. Other than that I haven't a clue as to circuit design to go with my 4AAA or 2-9V idea. Other than my contention that in this day of electronic wizardry, certainly my circuit idea can certainly replace the existing stuff from the factory. I would not consider that defacing the camera any more than tearing out old countertops and putting in Corean or granite. A minor refurbishing to keep a good machine active is quite permissible. Old capacitors are like dead batteries and rotten teeth. They have to come out sooner or later. They're not even proprietary parts anyway.

Replacing with new capacitors would be a poor idea, considering the likely usage frequency in this day and time. Capacitors leak down. With no switch, and the capacitor being your "switch", you essentially have a circuit that is always on and draining batteries, though more slowly. But still draining. In 1957 when it was a daily use camera, and new batteries available at every drugstore at cheap prices, it was one thing. The chances of the batteries being used up long before they leaked down from infrequent use, made the circuit perfectly economical in it's day. Now, you can spend $40 for new batteries, use the camera once a month, or twice a year, and have to re-buy batteries each time you wanted to use it. I understand this site has a limited readership, and my answer may lie with someone who has never visited the forum. But I have no doubt somebody somewhere can design a replacement circuit that will fit in the same place, without altering the camera with drillholes that detract from the camera's original condition and saleability. We're only talking about tripping a solenoid. The Pacemakers tripped solenoids with 6 or less volts. The photoflash batteries were its capacitor.

I don't like cases either. But this is a very nice F and my preferred actual user 35. My inquiry as to cases was only to transport them. Once they're in my car and safe from being banged accidentally on various structures getting there, the top half gets ditched. I'm not even thrilled with going "bottom half" any more than necessary. But I've discovered if I keep my outfit in my bag or aluminum suitcase, I never actually use them at all. At that point they are "packed", so to speak. I like it handy. I only want to give it ordinary prudent protection. Beyond that I'm not going to treat it like fine antique china. But face it--the most likely place to bang it up is on the doorjamb of the car in the first place. Bu once I get out of the car and into the cornfield to shoot, that case gets ditched.

I am familiar with the site linked below, but I am still unclear about any interchangeability among the Nikon F and F2 cases. The site linked here does nothing to help me resolve this question. Other research choices scantly available seem to give the idea that they are indeed interchangeable. I'd appreciate any knowledgeable input on this question. Thank you. Nikon F and F2 Camera Cases