Dez
Bodger Extraordinaire
Well, I guess all of them are a bit strange, and there is a lot of variation, but mine has some things I have never seen elsewhere.
I recently summoned up enough courage or foolhardiness to replace the shutter tapes in this camera. Although the 1A is a simpler design than the later Contaxes, it is very delicate, and not at all well designed, so unless you are really sure you know what you are doing, and have already succeeded in this job a few times with Kievs and a Contax 2/3 model, don't attempt a similar repair on a Contax 1! The shutter curtain design is NOT anywhere near as reliable or robust as the later versions, although they may look the same at first glance. These cameras were notoriously unreliable, even 80 years ago, and it's close to miraculous to find one that's working today.
Through luck or excessive caution, I did manage to finish the job without breaking anything. So now the camera is back to normal, that is rather cranky. This is a very old one, with a serial number indicating it was made in 1932, and it has the original design's rather rare steel shutter curtains. There are a couple of strange things about it, and I had asked for opinions about these features on the list a couple years ago, but I guess it is just too obscure. So I'm trying again.
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This is from the series that should have a raised "pimple" in front of the focus wheel. Instead, it has a flat brass disc pressed into the aluminum front casting. It wasn't primed well enough, and the paint has come off the disk as can be seen. Is this an indication that the focus mechanism was updated during some repair, and the original "pimple" insert was replaced by a flat one?
The second question is about the serial number. As for almost all Contax 1's, the original number has had an engraved "A" added at the front, indicating that it had gone through the Zeiss repair system, possibly on warranty. What's different with this camera is that there is a lightly-engraved "3" between the year letter, U, and the first digit of the serial number, which is in the 21,000 range. Also, there is an engraved suffix "P" at the end of the serial number. I have never seen either of these before. I am making the assumption that the "3" indicates that the camera had been through warranty repair three times, and might be a warning to repair technicians to avoid touching it with a barge pole.
I would greatly appreciate any information people on the list might have about these unusual aspects of my camera.
Also, if there is anyone out there who has some genuine original Contax shutter tape material and is willing to part with it, please let me know. The tapes are made of woven Unobtainium, and I needed to do all manner of unusual things to make a substitute material work properly. The good stuff is flat and smooth, a hair under 2.5mm wide, and approximatelu 0.2mm (.007") thick.
Cheers,
Dez
I recently summoned up enough courage or foolhardiness to replace the shutter tapes in this camera. Although the 1A is a simpler design than the later Contaxes, it is very delicate, and not at all well designed, so unless you are really sure you know what you are doing, and have already succeeded in this job a few times with Kievs and a Contax 2/3 model, don't attempt a similar repair on a Contax 1! The shutter curtain design is NOT anywhere near as reliable or robust as the later versions, although they may look the same at first glance. These cameras were notoriously unreliable, even 80 years ago, and it's close to miraculous to find one that's working today.
Through luck or excessive caution, I did manage to finish the job without breaking anything. So now the camera is back to normal, that is rather cranky. This is a very old one, with a serial number indicating it was made in 1932, and it has the original design's rather rare steel shutter curtains. There are a couple of strange things about it, and I had asked for opinions about these features on the list a couple years ago, but I guess it is just too obscure. So I'm trying again.
<
This is from the series that should have a raised "pimple" in front of the focus wheel. Instead, it has a flat brass disc pressed into the aluminum front casting. It wasn't primed well enough, and the paint has come off the disk as can be seen. Is this an indication that the focus mechanism was updated during some repair, and the original "pimple" insert was replaced by a flat one?
The second question is about the serial number. As for almost all Contax 1's, the original number has had an engraved "A" added at the front, indicating that it had gone through the Zeiss repair system, possibly on warranty. What's different with this camera is that there is a lightly-engraved "3" between the year letter, U, and the first digit of the serial number, which is in the 21,000 range. Also, there is an engraved suffix "P" at the end of the serial number. I have never seen either of these before. I am making the assumption that the "3" indicates that the camera had been through warranty repair three times, and might be a warning to repair technicians to avoid touching it with a barge pole.
I would greatly appreciate any information people on the list might have about these unusual aspects of my camera.
Also, if there is anyone out there who has some genuine original Contax shutter tape material and is willing to part with it, please let me know. The tapes are made of woven Unobtainium, and I needed to do all manner of unusual things to make a substitute material work properly. The good stuff is flat and smooth, a hair under 2.5mm wide, and approximatelu 0.2mm (.007") thick.
Cheers,
Dez
