Winter Maintenance

You may have noticed that just recently posts around here have become a little less frequent. Nothing is amiss I’m pleased to report! I work in retail and the weeks leading up to Christmas are always manic as you can imagine! Of course the weather changes and my last couple of days off have been wet and dull, not conducive to going out and making photo’s. That said I got out today and used a roll of 120 HP5, images will be forthcoming!! Before I set off however I ran through a few checks, and this reminded me of a routine that I should repeat a few more times over the coming days!

I took out my Zeiss Ikon 517/16 I haven’t used it for a while so as I removed it from the case, I gave it a quick check over. I opened up the bellows, all seemed well. I operated the shutter a few times – of course I didn’t need to wind on with this camera, it’s independent. I worked my way through the speeds, especially the slower ones. It’s good to do this with any older film camera. I believe it moves around the lubricant and helps stop things ceasing up. Same with the aperture – no click stops here, but I opened it up and closed it again a few times, to move things around a bit. All seemed fine so I loaded in a roll of HP5 and off I went.

I need to do this with all my cameras and lenses. Some I haven’t used this year, they’ll need to be operated a few times, to keep things running. If it’s an SLR I’ll use the timer a few times, that often get’s overlooked and can jam up a camera. I tend to remove batteries from cameras as I put them away. That didn’t apply in this case, but as I may not use said camera for a year – I try to remember. In my years I’ve thrown away many cameras and especially flashguns where the corrosion from battery leak has wrecked electronics. I also work lenses a bit too, opening and closing the aperture blades.

If you have a spare hour in the coming days – think of your mechanical cameras and give them a workout!!

The image at the top of the page is nothing to do with any of this – I came across it while cleaning out a few files the other day. It was made with one of my Spotmatics – they need a play too!!