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View Full Version : LF repair in Tokyo, Japan ... ?



Tadge Dryja
20-Aug-2004, 03:21
Hi everyone. I've used this forum a bit for the past year. Well, I just moved to Japan. It's been a pretty crazy few weeks.

So, I brought all my camera equipment here. Unfortunately some of it got pretty banged up en route. I have a horseman 45 LE monorail, and on of the sortof-triangular tilt knobs broke off in transport. It doesn't look too bad, but I don't want to try anything myself, and would rather pay some place to fix it for me. Unfortunately I speak very little japanese and don't really know my way around here at all. I've been to Yodobashi Camera in shinjuku (which seems to be the B&H of tokyo), and while they certainly have lots of equpiment and film, they didn't offer repair services.

Anyone out there know any place in the tokyo area where you could get something like this fixed? Maybe it's a bit of a long shot, but then, maybe not.

Oh, also one of my copal shutters is kindof busted too (thankfully the lens in the shutter is fine) but I assume any place that could fix up a monorail camera could tackle a shutter.

Thanks for any help!

-Tadge

michael Allen
20-Aug-2004, 08:27
I was in the same quandry with my Ebony, I decided to send it to S.K. Grimes at www.skgrimes.com, they come highly recomended.

Ernest Purdum
20-Aug-2004, 08:58
The Horseman maker has a customer service department. They are: Komamura Corp., Komamura Bldg. 3-2-4 Nihonbashi, Ningyo-cho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo. Their phone number is 03-3806-0118 and the email address is export@komamura.co.jp. If they don't do shutters I would think that they could refer you to somebody for this part of the job, maybe Copal themselves.

Andreas Schmidt
27-Aug-2004, 06:40
The only repair company which I have experience with in Japan is Kanto in Kawasaki: http://www.kanto-cs.co.jp/index.html They are basically specialized in 35mm lenses and cameras, but should be able to handle your shutter as well. They are perfect for anything which has to do with lenses. At least the staff which I met does not speak English, though.

Maybe the better option for large-format equipment is Gin-ichi (http://www.ginichi.com). They have a shop in Ginza area and while I'm not sure whether they do repair work by themselves they will be able to help you for sure. They have English speaking staff. Their phone number is 03-3561-7877. You can find them on this map (C3): http://photojpn.org/news/modules.php?set_albumName=maptokyo&id=ginza&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php

Those are shops which I know and which I can recommend (for Gin-ichi I have no experience with repairs, though). You can find some others in this list: http://photojpn.org/dir/listings.php?cmd=viewlistB&cid=37

Hope that helps...

Tadge Dryja
30-Aug-2004, 04:00
Thanks, I went to Gin-Ichi. They were nice and spoke some english too. I kindof expected the price to be really high, and I was not dissapointed.

They had a lot of crazy lenses there that I'm sure people on this site would love to gawk at.