How good is Certo6?

A great joke relative to NY and their culture:

A nice Mid-Western couple are trying to find a certain tourist site in NY city and they see a police man walking a beat, so the husband walks up to the police man and asks"Hello sir, could you please give me directions to the Empire State Building or should I just go f**k myself".

I live in a suburb of Phila and visit the big apple often.....they love that joke.

Ray
 
I have decided to purchase an Agfa Isolette III. I don't want to go through the hassle of finding one at a flea market and having it sent off to be fixed, i am willing to go ahead and spend the money to get one that is ready to go. Also, I like the look of the brass that certo6 offers more than i like the chrome. (yes, i know he simply polishes off the chrome.) For my needs, is he the only game in town, or is there someone else on the world wide intarwebs that sells a similar product, either of better quality or of the same quality for less money?

Thanks in advance!
 
I recently bought a Balda Hapo 66e from Certo6. It looks like it is new, and everthing works smooth as can be, the first roll came though beautifully. These are difficult cameras to maintain, so there is bound to be some problems. First roll Balda Hapo 66e:

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I am going to write few thoughts about camera repair, as it is my job.

I do not know wery well certo6, but one thing has surprised me on his site : there is a picture of how he does CLA on central shutters : It seems he throws them in naphta, blows it with air, and put it back on the camera.

This kind of work is not a CLA, it is something that removes (badly) hardened grease and causes lack of lubrication. It is not a profesionnal overhaul at all. When I CLA a shutter, I remove every shutter baldes, every aperture blades, and clean them first in naphta, them in an ultrasonic bath. Same thing for other shutter's components. Then, the main shutter spring has to be changed, it is the heart of the shutter, and you can't have correct shutter speeds without a new spring. In case you cannot find them any more, you can retension them. Then, the speeds need to be calibrated on a shutter speed tester. And if you're lucky the shutter has been correctly made at the factory, you have decent and usable speeds.

The fact that he himself assume he's not a professionnal, and that it is not his job, would warn you against common trouble with people not knowing what they do when they try to repair vintage cameras.

This thing applies with rangefinder mechanism, like those we find on super ikontas, with two contra-rotative prism. The mechanical play between the two prisms is reduced with a spring loaded gear in the RF train gear that you can disturb by simply unscrewing the main screw that maintains the focusing wheel. Once it is done, all has to be put back again by removing all the RF mechanism. And it is a pain in the ... to put it back correctly.

So, be warned and buy your gear from people knowing these cameras.
 
Mael, votre site ne marche bien pour les utilisateurs de navigateur Firefox!

And then, I was distracted from reading about your repair services, when I found the story about the Aero Ektar 2,5/178. But that is my problem. :D Quel objectif!

Cheers,
Dave
 
Merkin said:
I have decided to purchase an Agfa Isolette III. I don't want to go through the hassle of finding one at a flea market and having it sent off to be fixed, i am willing to go ahead and spend the money to get one that is ready to go. Also, I like the look of the brass that certo6 offers more than i like the chrome. (yes, i know he simply polishes off the chrome.) For my needs, is he the only game in town, or is there someone else on the world wide intarwebs that sells a similar product, either of better quality or of the same quality for less money?

Thanks in advance!
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Okay, B&H, Adorama, KEH, and occasionally a few of the better vintage camera repair shops have a few they have restored/repaired and that their customers will not pay for that they are willing to sell. For example, you might check with Essex or Fedka and see if they have anything right now.

However, the Isolettes are very easy to work on and most people just do their own.
 
Roanoke Valley has a population of 16 million!!!

Roanoke Valley has a population of 16 million!!!

FallisPhoto said:
snip/

Now I live in the Roanoke Valley, a huge section of Virginia with twice the population of New York City. Everyone here has guns, and yet do you know how many murders we have in a typical year in the whole valley? Six.

/snip
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Roanoke Valley has a population of 16 million!!!

New York City has a very low crime rate, much lower than most other major US cities.
 
mich8261 said:
Roanoke Valley has a population of 16 million!!!

New York City has a very low crime rate, much lower than most other major US cities.
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New York City has a population of 8,000,000 or so. You're looking at the population of the NYC Metropolitan Area, which includes two other states. The Roanoke Valley encompases the whole area between the blue ridge and appalachin mountain chains from the end of the Shenandoah Valley (about halfway down Virginia) down through North Carolina.
 
Yes, but you only included the Virginia part of the Roanoke Valley in your post, & the population in VA itself is less than 500,000 ( http://www.roanoke.org/?category=location&content=89 ), & that's closer to the population of Staten Island, the smallest borough, just by itself.

EDIT: As of 2006, the violent crime rate as compiled by the FBI for the Roanoke MSA (including Botetourt, Craig, Franklin, and Roanoke Counties and Roanoke and Salem Cities) was 420.1/100K people. The rate for the Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA MSA (Metropolitan Divisions of Edison, NJ; Nassau-Suffolk County, NY; Newark-Union, NJ-PA; and New York-Wayne-White Plains, NY-NJ) was 438.4/100K people. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/data/table_06.html

FallisPhoto said:
New York City has a population of 8,000,000 or so. You're looking at the population of the NYC Metropolitan Area, which includes two other states. The Roanoke Valley encompases the whole area between the blue ridge and appalachin mountain chains from the end of the Shenandoah Valley (about halfway down Virginia) down through North Carolina.
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Chill people. This conversation is going places that do not belong here. At all.

William
 
point well taken William.

FallisPhoto, how can I find out more about your repair service? The Franka Solida in my signature needs some work.

Cheers from NYC,
 
mich8261 said:
point well taken William.

FallisPhoto, how can I find out more about your repair service? The Franka Solida in my signature needs some work.

Cheers from NYC,
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What's wrong with it? With my present setup, I don't have much of a machine shop and can't fabricate some parts.
 
I am not expert, but the springs seem fine as do the bellows, but that's just from peering at them. I suppose I should take a flashlight to it.
 
chippy said:
if the slow speeds are out then the faster speeds will need some adjustment too IMO
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Not necessarily. Bear in mind that we are talking about a dirty shutter. Just cleaning it up may entirely restore the slower and medium shutter speeds. For the fastest shutter speeds, different springs and gears are involved. They will usually need retensioning or... well, 1/500 second, on a 50 year old camera, is usually a lot closer to about 1/300 second -- 1/350 second at best -- unless the springs are retensioned. On the other hand, most people can't tell the difference, so it is just a question of whether he wants me to do it or not.
 
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mich8261 said:
I am not expert, but the springs seem fine as do the bellows, but that's just from peering at them. I suppose I should take a flashlight to it.
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Checking the bellows, with a light, is an absolute necessity. I use a small but very bright LED on a gooseneck that I can get deep in there and check all the folds and corners. That said, there are several options if it has light leaks.

The cheapest and most common solution to leaking bellows is to patch the holes. That is a temporary fix though and it will probably start leaking again within a year or two, depending on how the holes are patched. The problem is that you'll still have bellows that are made of the same worn out material that started leaking light in the first place and it is only a matter of time until it springs new leaks.

The next cheapest option is to replace the bellows with good condition "new old stock" replacement bellows. I have some Kodak bellows that might fit. Then again, they might not. This would involve a complete teardown of the camera, in order to seperate the two frame halves and get the old bellows out and the new ones in. I can do that, but it is not easy -- or cheap. Note on Jurgen's web page how none of the Solidas have new bellows. It would save you about $70 over the price of a new bellows though.

Next option is to have a new set of bellows made, but that is expensive. I think Camera Bellows, in England, charges $80 each for them. Then I'd still have to tear down the camera to get them in.

About the springs: without retensioning, the fastest shutter speeds will be off. For example, in a camera that is supposed to have a 1/500 second shutter speed, the actual shutter speed will be about 1/300 second. With new springs, which you would have to have made, you can get an actual speed of maybe 1/450 second. with retensioned springs you can get maybe 1/350 to 1/400 second. The problem is that tempered steel breaks as easily as it bends and they can break during retensioning if you are not very careful. On the other hand, lots of people can't tell the difference between 1/300 second and 1/400 second.
 
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chippy said:
I have never seen anyone else do it to welta.
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I've never seen anyone else forget to go over the metal with 440 grit sandpaper (or crocus cloth) and metal polishing compound after block sanding it with 220 grit either. Look at the edge of that door in the second photo! I also notice that he has not cleaned the leatherette. There is a big patch of fingerprint crud on the front door (dried sweat, grime, skin oils and sloughed skin cells -- a DNA analyst's dream come true, maybe, but not mine). "CLA'd, of course!" -- kind of makes you wonder about the quality of those CLAs, doesn't it? Then, if you look at the paint, you will see this weird mix of high gloss and low gloss patches he's got going on. His eyes must be going really bad if he didn't notice that.
 
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