Fuji GA645Wi is ill

[meandihagee]

...as in damaged. The camera operated just fine until now, when:

- it started to advance the film on start-up (randomly, not every time), I can hear the roll turning once. This happens when there is no film in it. I put a roll in to see if this happens when I use the camera without film in it

- sometimes the selected aperture goes bananas, switching from one f to another very quickly as if it was in Full Auto mode (which I never use)

- when loading the film, the big dial sometimes advances the film more than it should. So if you spin it once it should turn the roll once. If you turn the big wheel faster (say two increments, as if you're going from f4 to f8 quickly in shooting mode) it makes the roll to go in a crazy spin, advancing the film with more than two strokes (or increments). It used to work fine respecting the number of strokes when used in accelerated operation, which I thought it was a great feature to help you reload faster

- the second shutter is not very responsive, it goes half way down focusing the lens just fine, but if I press all the way down it sometimes doesn't fire

So I open the back door and take a good look inside. I see that one of the cables connected to the lens has something sticky on it, as if it was peeled. It looks like when you peel a sticker and some goo is still attached to both ends (like stretched bubblegum). This cable folds on itself when the lens is collapsed. Is is normal to look like that? Can you guys take look inside your cameras and tell me if it's the original cable or some guy repaired it and the cable is starting to fail? It still focuses fine, though. But I'm expecting to start slowing down focus as it doesn't look right at all.

Pictured below is the lens focused at 0.7m when the lens is in its longest position and the ribbon cable stretched to maximum. Or maybe this happened because I didn't open the camera for a long time (it wasn't that long actually).

Any good repair guys for this camera, could I find spares somewhere...? The second shutter, ribbon cable, big dial...

Thank you for reading my long, desperate post.

 

[DavidKKHansen]

I'm sorry that no one has been able to give you advice (seems it's a relatively uncommon camera) and I also cannot help you. Besides saying that you can send it in to Fujifilm for a repair service, as they still support their medium format rangefinders.

Could you give us an update as to what the status is with the camera? Were you able to get it fixed by a 3rd party? I'm thinking of getting a GA645Wi as a back up for my Bronica RF645.

Best,
David

 

[meandihagee]

Well, to be honest I guess I panicked a little bit... and maybe went into too much details.

I guess the advance is ok (when the film is loaded). The display going into random bananas is probably some old wiring that needs to be looked at. The wheel that rolls the film needs more care when handling.

The cable is still a mystery, but the camera works.

It's an electronic camera that is 20 years old after all. It definitely needs a check-up, but I'm a little reluctant on sending a working camera overseas. I'll send it when it fails.

Other than that it's a pretty cool camera, I would say it's ideal for a back-up: really portable, great optics, cheap. The AF is ok once you get the hang of it, in bright daylight it doesn't really miss a beat as long as it's a contrasty surface (not a plain white wall). In dim light is so-so, but if you're careful and double-check the distance on the viewfinder it's fine. I even shot it pre-focused and it's fine. It's the equivalent DOF of a 45mm lens on 35mm (I have the wide one with 28mm equivalent).

The flash is really nice to have.

Not a big fan of the dials and electronic stuffs, but I'm willing to compromise a lot for portability. When collapsed, I forget I have it in my backpack.

I hope my whining doesn't give it a bad rep or something. If it breaks I'll probably buy another.

Minus points:

It goes at above 400 shutter speed only if you are at f11. Let's say it's a sunny day and you want to shoot f4. If you have 400 iso film, you can't. You have to go above f9.5 in order to access the fastest shutter speed which is 700. But if you know what you are going to shoot you can work around this and get the iso accordingly.

 

[DavidKKHansen]

Sorry for the late response and thank you for the great follow up with more details about the camera. There aren't too many reports on the camera, so always nice to read more from different users.

The display going random bananas seems to be thing that can happen to Fuji's GA-series cameras. Don't know how frequent it is, but if something were to fail first on the camera, this seems to be it.

Though glad to hear you're still using the camera until it dies. Then fix it up and keep shooting, good attitude! ;-)