New camera repair service and custom machining in France

[MartyNL]

Very impressive, Mael.

[Mael]

Thanks ! I got lucky to have useful advices from a master camere technician, now retired. Thanks to him !

[MartyNL]

I can't imagine this enterprise as being a "get rich, quick plan!", but far more of a "labour of love", for you, Mael.

I presume you get a great deal of personal satisfaction from restoring these historic, intricate machines and beloved items. And knowing your devotion and skills are salvaging and prolonging the demise of these mechanical 'treasures'.

I can only wonder and support your endeavours!
I will be in touch...

[Mael]

Well, even If I thank you for your nice thoughts and support, I do not want to fall in the usual fashionable storytelling. Beyond the historical importance of these beautiful objects, I have to say that, coming from the industry, (where there is some competition), you need to have a perfect service to survive, or at least try. And I sell and repair tools for my customers. They need reliable ones. I try to provide artists, professionnals, or camera enthousiasts what they want or look for.

[PatrickMarq]

Hello Patrick.

Advance mechanism has been repaired too, viewing mirror has been custom cut, and most significant optical alignment was re-set.

About 9 upon 10 TLR cameras I receive have defective optical alignment, which I try to set within 0,02mm maximum deviation if possible.

I am lucky to own a factory Rolleiflex Autocollimator to do this.

It is the most critical thing if you want to have the best resolution from your lens, and usually it is not done by most of workshops.

Using a tool that is a reproduction of Rollei factory tool that I made on my lathe, I screw it in place of the front lens block.



then using a marble and a micrometer I measure the lens deviation on the four corners of the image frame



Using micro washer shims I then correct the front lens mount in order to have the results I need.

After that it's time to check with more accuracy on the Rolleiflex autocollimator, with lens removed. In B setting, full aperture, you must align a moving reticle to a static reticle in order to set the film plane. Then, you put an optical mirror on the shutter, and if the moving reticle is superposing to the static one, the optical alignment is perfect.






With this tool I can check the lens deviation, but also set the infinity on both lenses. After putting back the lens, I must find the point where the luminescent reticle is the sharpest. To minimize light diffraction, a green filter is put between the camera and the collimator in order to have an average light wavelength, it reduces reading errors.



on the first and last image you can see on the left a custom made collimator I machined using a XIXth century telescope from a theodolith, that is in the 600mm focal length range, very useful for checking infinity of wide angles, and on the right a Leitz collimator, originally designed for movie cameras, that I converted for both autocollimator and collimator. I can very quickly observe optical alignment and infinity setting on most small format cameras in a few minutes.

It’s quite impressive what you have done. When I bought the camera, I thought well I just replace a screw.
Again thank you

[Mael]

It’s quite impressive what you have done. When I bought the camera, I thought well I just replace a screw.
Again thank you

This was back in the days, common practice on a camera. Without a proper optical alignment, you can have the best CanoNikoLeica lens in the world, if the lens mount is not straight and aligned, you will never have the best performance from any lens you put on it. Most tutorials I see on internet never speaks about it, because you need proper tools, time and experience. But if you read some basic litterature about optical systems, lens alignment is key to resolution and corner sharpness. (And on some poorly performing lenses vignetting evenly distributed in the four corners )

On most TLR, the lens and shutter support shims that has been lost can be found in the focusing mechanism, usually in the old grease...

Last Rolleicords I have done : one Vb more than 0,20mm deviation, one Va more than 0,13mm, your Kalloflex 0,16mm error, etc...Factory specs 0,02mm to 0,05mm maximum depending on brands, optical formula, etc.

These old cameras had previous lives, sometimes the rigid hood had taken most of the previous kisses from the walls, but transfered some damage into the camera, or maybe they were not set properly at the factory (these are called "friday afternoon cameras" )

[Mark Sampson]

I'm very happy to hear of your new workshop. I doubt that I'll send you any repair business form the USA, but it is heartening to know that you are carrying on a noble tradition. Certainly you will find many customers from the EU. Best of luck!

[Mael]

Thank you !