My Big Problem - fighting an Ensign Roll Film Reflex.

[tunalegs]

Ensign Roll Film Reflex. by Berang Berang, on Flickr

This huge box is an Ensign Roll Film Reflex. 6x9 negatives on 120. Shutter fires at 1/25 or B. F/7.7 triplet. I've always wanted one of these things. So when one showed up on ebay, I was excited. The price though was insanely high. Nobody bid. It reappeared with a best offer option. I waited until the last day and made an offer and obviously, I won.

When I got it, it had been obvious that somebody had tampered with it, trying to fix it, and there was a plastic spool in it, so it had been used since the 1980s at least.

I ran a test roll through. Disappointment. The shutter only fired on half the exposures, and there is a massive light leak somewhere.

SAAB by Berang Berang, on Flickr

Porsche by Berang Berang, on Flickr

The lens actually seems pretty sharp, even wide open, but I'll have to find some way of negating the massive mirror slap.

mirror shake by Berang Berang, on Flickr

I can see why they gave up fixing it. But I'm not scared of old cameras, so I decided to take it apart and find out what's going on.

 

[tunalegs]

I started digging into the camera, and found what was causing the trouble.

Ensign Light Leak by Berang Berang, on Flickr

The light leak was caused by this old piece of tape which has come unstuck. It shields the mirror pivot from light entering through the ground glass.

Ensign Light Leak by Berang Berang, on Flickr

Not a good thing!

The shutter is actually far more complicated than I assumed. There are lots, and lots, and lots, of moving parts. Also lots of sliding surfaces. I ended up using a q-tip to thinly coat a lot of metal to metal surfaces, this resulted in the shutter being smoother, quieter, faster, and oddly enough removed a lot of the mirror slap.

Ensign Mirror Box by Berang Berang, on Flickr

The problem with the shutter not exposing turned out to have to do with this little latch and tab:
Ensign Shutter by Berang Berang, on Flickr

Ensign Shutter by Berang Berang, on Flickr

The tab with the cut out in it (to the right) is connected to a shutter blade that caps the shutter after the mirror swings up. The latch is supposed to hold it down, and thus hold the shutter open, until released by the pin on the left. The mirror hits the pin, which releases the latch, which allows the tab to spring up, which closes the shutter. The problem was this latch wasn't latching reliably, so sometime the shutter would close before being triggered by the mirror. The solution was to just bend the tab slightly down so it would catch on the latch sooner when resetting the shutter. Works fine now!

Ensign Shutter by Berang Berang, on Flickr

Ensign Shutter by Berang Berang, on Flickr

And here you can sort of see how it works:
Ensign Shutter by Berang Berang, on Flickr

 

[Robert Lai]

Fascinating!
I'm eager to see the results after your full CLA of the camera.
I'm surprised to see that the intricate Rube Goldberg mirror-shutter mechanism still works (kind of) after all of these years.

 

[oftheherd]

Well done! I too can't wait to see photos from this camera. What fascinating camera to own and use.

 

[tunalegs]

Sigh. This should not have been moved. This was just the start of a long thread about me using this camera, not intended to be focused on the repair.

If a mod would kindly put it back where it belongs, that would be appreciated.