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camera woes (revisited)

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

The repairs done to my Olympus rangefinder were clearly insufficient. The thing is once again unable to focus on infinity, and even before that highly-visible error had occurred, there had been some invisible problem (perhaps a disconnect between the viewfinder and the lens?) which meant that the three rolls of film I shot on the weekend were all badly out of focus.

The fellow at the local film lab I'm now going to thought that it was maybe a battery issue and determined that in fact the battery was close to dead. But that would only impact the metering, and perhaps result in some overexposed images. Not the sort of thing that would result in 2/3 of the shots being completely out of focus.

So now I'm left with three choices. a) take it back to the jerks who charged me ¥3000 to "fix" it the first time, or b) find someone to repair it (this worked for both of the other cameras that were recently ailing) or c) set it on a high shelf somewhere as a memento.

Currently it's in c-land, but I've found and contacted an outfit in the UK who repairs old Olympus cameras. I'd expect they'd have seen a thousand of these old rangefinders by now, but then it'll cost me a fortune to send over there for repairs.

Rrrrr! Why can't delicate 40-year-old (used) equipment be perfect forever?