the camera is dead, long live the camera
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
Quite suddenly, my beloved primary camera began exhibiting problems late last year. I only shot about 100 rolls throughout the year, but that's been the pace for three-and-a-half of the past five years that I've owned the thing, and the camera always showed signs of previous heavy use.
Ever since I bought it, the film advance would occasionally fail to completely advance the film to the next frame. This was annoying, but I could live with it (I once took it to a repair specialist who said he couldn't reproduce it and it would likely be difficult to identify and repair the root cause. But more recently, the frame advance has also started to make a dull grinding noise that in the past few weeks has taken on a slight shrieking quality. And what's worse, the meter has been failing in low light conditions, nullifying what was for me one of the great features of the camera.
The camera is an early-model Minolta XD11, and probably was manufactured in the late 1970's. I'll never know how many owners it had or how many rolls of film it saw.
I took it to my favourite camera store and demonstrated the problem with the frame advance. Happily, my Japanese is at a point where I can explain what I want (via a series of childishly simple sentences). The fellow looked concerned and told me that the frame advance noise problem was likely going to cost $70 to repair. I was unable to explain the metering problem and didn't even try. But by easy extrapolation from the $70 figure, I could see that I was heading into territory where it would cost me more to repair the camera than replace it.
So yesterday I replaced it with a used XD (identical model, but named with the Japan-market designation). Actually, it's one of the rare "50th anniversay" models (I've read that only 1500 were ever produced). It is in great condition, and cost only about $270 including a 50mm f/1.7 lens that's a copy of one I already had (the store wouldn't break up the set).
So, here's hoping it leads to another five years of service!