Little White Witch

I first saw the Lomography Fisheye sitting on Jessica's shelf, small, white, cute and most importantly: a camera. Being the little boy I am, I just had to pick it up and examine every little facet and feature, part and piece, feature and flaw of the little thing. There wasn't much to it: a fixed, wide angle glass lens, 135 type film, no manual focusing needed, and a built in flash. It was simple and compact with a wide angle lens, neat.

I was sitting there, spinning the film advance and listening to the soothing rattling click of the crank already growing bored with it, about to put it back on the shelf. That's when Jessica told me the shutter release stopped working a couple years ago and it's never worked since; so it's just been sitting on the shelf collecting dust. My interest was piqued; my ears were perked.
I had to have it, opened to expose the guts. How did it work? Was it as simple on the inside as it's plain exterior suggested? What was wrong with it and could I fix it? Only one way to find out. "Hey Jessica, you should let me borrow this."

***

Back home I had to tear into it immediately. Inside it was simple to take apart. The insides were held to the outer shell with four small screws, one on each corner of the inside. The next thing to go was the film winding lever, one screw was all that held that on. After that the two halves slid apart and most everything was exposed.

An analog camera is really a very simple device. It's just a light sealed box with film inside of it. At some point you open a small hole to expose the film to light. Then you either switch out the film or wind the next section of film into place. Easy as eggs. While this is true for for any camera I can think of (digital barred, though not far removed) each one will go about each action a little differently. I had to sit and fiddle with this fisheye for a bit to figure out its own approach to photography magic if I was going to find out how to fix it. Prodding and poking, touching and tweaking, dismantling and diagnosing -- and I had it.

What is this thing you ask? This S-Shaped part connects with the cog that makes contact with the holes on the film. The action of winding the film with your thumb in turn spins that cog and with that altered piece, cocks the shutter. (I say "altered" because broken implies uselessness. Let's just just say it's been altered out of original manufacturing specification -- to a great degree.)

So what to do? Ideally I wanted to fix that little altered piece. The thing about plastic is that once it's snapped like that, it's never going to be the same without the use of an expensive and slightly dangerous chemical: "Rez-n-Bond" #1. Worst of all, it only works on certain plastics - not polyethalene or polypropylene - and I don't even know of what this thing is made. So repairing the little S-Shaped piece was out. The next best thing to do, in my mind, was to bypass the need for that S-Shaped piece altogether: bond the cog with its axle! So with all pieces in place as they should be (minus the S-Shaped part) I applied a very small amount of Super Glue.

(It should be known that I normally hate (HATE!) to use Super Glue. It stinks, it seeps and crawls to unwanted places, and because of it's love of moisture it dries to skin especially well. But because of the location of the parts to be worked on and the space constraints, Super Glue seemed like the only option I had.)


After two drops of Super Glue I left the camera upside down to let the glue set in place on the cog/axle. While that was drying I continually rotated the cog and axle together to keep the glue from freezing the entire thing to the inner body of the camera. (damn you super glue!)

With the glue dried and the parts married it was time to reassemble the camera. Two screws on top, the two halves together, one screw for the film winding lever, and then four inside brought the camera back to wholeness. The result?

It's all too tight, and I hate to say I don't know why exactly! There is definitely unwanted pressure on the cog and on the inner body in general. It seems like the glue, perhaps, didn't married the two pieces to the exact fit needed. and now the axle is pushing up on the top of the inner camera. Drat! I almost want to take it back apart to disconnect the cog and axle but I fear I'd only do more damage and it's not even my camera!

I'm sorry Jessica. No hard feelings I hope. Thank you for letting me experiment and for providing material for this blog.