More dusty old cameras

I found a Sears KS500 at a garage sale on Saturday. This is a re-badged Ricoh KS5, an all manual 35mm SLR very similar to the Pentax K1000. I think this one is a polycarbonate body because it weighs far less than the Ricoh XR-1 I used way back when. That XR-1 was brass, if I recall right. You could beat someone to death with it and then take a photo of the body. Everything on this KS500 works with the exception of the self timer, but I never take photos of myself anyway.




This one came with two lenses, both Ricohs. There's a normal 50mm f2.0 and a 135mm f2.8. The 50mm lens works, but the 135 mm unit has oil on the aperture blades. See those gazillion ball bearings? I had visions of spilling them all over the table, but fortunately the whole mount comes off as a unit. This is totally unlike disassembling a freewheel from a bike! I found a bent operating arm on the aperture assembly, but since it was stuck wide open, I didn't find the oil until I managed to get the blades moving again. Of course, I don't have any solvent here to free them up, nor do I have any graphite to use on the linkage. I'll get some tomorrow.

There are some interesting (and wrong) ways to re-assemble this lens. I found some of them today and I'll undoubtedly find more tomorrow.