Konica C35 update

The Konica C35 has gone to the big shelf in the sky. I wrote that it had extensive internal corrosion, and that I'd tried to clean it up. But the battery compartment tabs had enough surface contamination to prevent any solder from adhering, so there was no chance to attach new wiring. The battery box is separate from the camera body, which should be a good thing. It's a plastic case meant for 2 button cells. But the worst news was that exposure mechanism is inoperative. I tried attaching a power supply to it and pointed a powerful flashlight into the photocell, but nothing worked. Now, it could be either the photocell or the exposure mechanism, there's no way of knowing.



I've been lucky so far with the old cameras I've picked up. This is the first one that's seriously gorfed. I put in a bid on another C35 on the shopgoodwill.com website. I was outbid, but I also received an email from the seller stating that the battery compartment could not be opened. Chances are, it's badly corroded too.

I like these small 35mm rangefinders. They'd make very nice pocket cameras, though I have to say that the Olympus XA is certainly an outstanding one. Still, I bought this C35 for five dollars at a flea market, so I'm not out much cash and I've learned quite a bit.

Konica C35 corrosion

I'm going ahead with this, but the camera may be nothing more than a paperweight when I'm finished. The black (negative) wire was corroded through at the battery tab, but I couldn't see that until I took the battery case out. To replace that red wire I had to remove the top, bottom, and lens mounting, as well as the rangefinder. That will probably mean the rangefinder will have to be re-calibrated when it's done, a task that took quite some time on the Yashica Electro GT. There are many interesting ways to screw up, and I found most of them.

I am a bad, bad man....(updated)

I went rooting about in a bin at a flea market, finding tons of old Kodaks, Polaroids, and for some odd reason, Minolta autofocus cameras, when I spied this way down on the bottom.



The battery leaked and corroded the battery compartment. Most of that is plastic so it shouldn't be a major problem. But I read Matt's Classic Cameras about repairing these, and his unit had corrosion all along the negative lead from the case, requiring replacement of the wire. There's a lovely photo on his site of the disassembled camera.


Of course, the seals are a gummy mess. At the bottom of this photo is a small roller that's part of the back. It's supposed to make winding a little smoother, and it's a nice touch on a camera that was meant as an inexpensive but decent quality photo taker in the days before the auto-focus, auto-everything camera killed off the rangefinder market.

Oh, there was also a Canon AF35ML in that bin. It's an automatic camera with a comparatively fast f 1.9 lens. I have one around here somewhere and I bought it new back in the 1980s. That model had two major problems. First, the battery compartment door had a tendency to break off. This was a shoddy design decision in what was a high end point and shoot. The other problem is the camera is gawdawful noisy! Honestly, I've never heard another one like it. It takes great pictures, but it's gratingly LOUD.

The one at the flea market had very badly corroded batteries. It went back into the bin.

(LATER)

I took the C35 apart this afternoon. It was worse than I expected.

This is the exposure mechanism inside the top cover. The rangefinder is to the right, and the frame counter is that wheel to the left. Those wires attached to the little white plastic box in the center come from the battery. See that gray blob at the end of the red wire? It's corrosion from battery fluid that traveled through the wire via capillary action. The wire will have to be replaced, but here's hoping the corrosive didn't find a way inside the exposure control mechanism, or this camera will just be a pretty paperweight.

But there's more. The battery compartment is plastic as I mentioned earlier. A pair of screws hold it in the cast aluminum camera body. One of them goes all the way through to the back of the camera, inside the film compartment. I found corrosion in there too. Hopefully, I'll be able to remove it with the assistance of some penetrating oil and maybe a soldering iron.

I can see some brackets that look like supports down inside the camera body. They're corroded. Most of the internal parts appear to be brass, though those corroded pieces may be steel.

Regardless, this camera is going to be a more involved project than I'd hoped. It's going to take a considerable amount of dis-assembly to fix this. I'm glad I only have five bucks in it.