Tempor shutter, prontor or compur copy?

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wupdigoj

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Hello. I am interested in purchasing a camera with a dead tempor shutter (cheaper than a working one). I have repaired and CLAd several compur shutters (different flavors), own a lot of spare parts, but I have never seen a disassembled prontor. If the tempor is a compur copy, I assume I will have no problems to bring it to live, but not sure about the prontor. Any clues about that?. Thank you very much.

Javier
 
Thank you, I knew this reference, but there is at least one more in the classic repair forum, that assures the tempor is a rather simplificated prontor copy. Nevertheless the price of the camera, an ercona, was too hight for me, for a non-working camera. I will wait for another one. Thanks

Javier
 
Hi Javier,

Pity the price of the Ercona was too high. I must have been lucky when i got mine on .bay.
If i open up the shutter of either my Weltax or Ercona i shall make some photos for reference and comparison with the Compur.

Regards,

Hans

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wupdigoj said:
Hello. I am interested in purchasing a camera with a dead tempor shutter (cheaper than a working one). I have repaired and CLAd several compur shutters (different flavors), own a lot of spare parts, but I have never seen a disassembled prontor. If the tempor is a compur copy, I assume I will have no problems to bring it to live, but not sure about the prontor. Any clues about that?. Thank you very much.

Javier
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The people who say, online, that a Tempor is like a Prontor must be retarded. I've been inside both and saying that a Tempor is like a Prontor is like saying that a Timex is like a Rollex. A Tempor is not a Prontor copy; it's what they call a "simplified" shutter that is very loosely based on a Prontor (and from what I saw, it was mostly just external appearance). I worked on one that was in a Zeiss Ercona once and I won't ever buy one again.

A Compur is made from machined metal. A Prontor is less expensively made from stamped metal pressings, but they are still good stamped metal pressings. A Tempor, on the other hand, is so cheaply made it's like they used cookie cutters on the bottoms of beer cans. The shutter only has four springs; one end of two of them doesn't even hook to anything, it just braces against the side of the shutter housing. The parts are so thin that, when worn, they tend to slip under and over one another where they are supposed to push against one another. In short, Tempors are utter crap. I've seen higher quality shutters in disposable cameras.

Tempors can be really hard to work on because they are such crap. In the one I was working on, the shutter had jammed and someone had tried to force it. When they did that, one piece went under another piece it was supposed to push against. It is made of cheap metal, so it had shaved off a tiny bit of metal from the edge as it went under. Unfortunately, the pieces were so thin to begin with that, afterward, it was like trying to get two knives to meet edge to edge. There is a hook that is supposed to catch the cocking ring at the end of its stroke, as you fire the shutter. The hook had slipped under the cocking ring too. In spite of this, the camera was still working, to an extent, because, instead of the hook, it was being jamming a little later on against some paint and other crud that had scaled from the inside of the housing. It was the only instance I have seen when cleaning a camera made it inoperable. The crud was the only thing holding it together. Without that crud, the hook would miss its catch, the cocking ring would go too far, and it would knock a couple of springs loose. I told the customer what was happening and recommended that he get another shutter, because his was not really repairable -- I don't suspect that many Tempors are.

I wouldn't get q Tempor under any circumstances, if I could help it. If I had no choice, I certainly wouldn't buy a dead one, because the odds are way too good that it wouldn't be repairable.
 
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Thanks for the elaborate answer Charles ! much appreciated.

I must have been extra lucky then having 2 folders with Tempors which both have no problems at all :)
 
Thank you very much for your response Fallisphoto (Charles?). It is always a pleasure to read from you. I am glad I didn't buy the camera. Every camera I have bought with inoperative compurs have been reparable. Even the compur copy in the Moskva is O.K. It is clearly not the case with tempors!.

Javier
 
hanskerensky said:
Thanks for the elaborate answer Charles ! much appreciated.

I must have been extra lucky then having 2 folders with Tempors which both have no problems at all :)
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Yes, you were lucky. Once they get problems, it is sheer hell fixing them, if they can even be fixed. Every camera that came with a Tempor could also be had with a better shutter though, and that shutter was usually a Prontor, so the most sensible option is to just get a camera with a Prontor and avoid the whole mess.
 
wupdigoj said:
Thank you very much for your response Fallisphoto (Charles?). It is always a pleasure to read from you. I am glad I didn't buy the camera. Every camera I have bought with inoperative compurs have been reparable. Even the compur copy in the Moskva is O.K. It is clearly not the case with tempors!.

Javier
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Compurs, Prontors, Rapaxes, Seikos and (within limits) Copal shutters are very easy to work on and so are their copies -- if they are well made. The Tempor is not a good copy -- Klio and Vario shutters are well made.

BTW, I said that Copals have limits only because there is no easy way to adjust shutter speeds if they are still slow after cleaning. It is usually a matter of polishing parts or retensioning springs if you want a Copal to go faster. I've never needed one to go slower, so I'm not sure how I'd manage that.

Oh, and yeah, I'm Charles
 
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hanskerensky said:
I used a searchmachine (google) with the words Tempor Shutter Repair and one of the first results was this one :
http://photo.net/medium-format-photography-forum/009bST

There the Tempor is called a Compur clone so you are lucky !

My little Welta Weltax has one but i'm not tempted to tamper with that Tempor ;-)
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A Compur has, roughly, about 80 machined metal parts in the front of the shutter and they are mostly held in place by screws. A Tempur has approximately 18 parts in the front of the shutter that are stamped out of sheet metal and they are held in place (loosely) by pins. None of the Tempor parts even vaguely resembles anything inside a Compur or Prontor shutter. In short, it isn't a "Compur clone."
 
Thanks for clarifying Charles,

I'm now disassembling a Compur Rapid EX/CR00-437 from a Perkeo II.
I'm tempted to to do so with a Tempor too just out of curiosity ;-)

Regards,
Hans
 
hanskerensky said:
Thanks for clarifying Charles,

I'm now disassembling a Compur Rapid EX/CR00-437 from a Perkeo II.
I'm tempted to to do so with a Tempor too just out of curiosity ;-)

Regards,
Hans
Click to expand...

Be very careful when taking the faceplate off of the Tempor. Remember how I said that the springs are not hooked into place and are just braced against the shutter housing? Well, if you're not careful, and if they have worked their way to where they are not sitting level, they can fly off into the carpet when the faceplate comes off. They can carry off the parts they are attached to also.

If this happens, send me a photo of the shutter and the parts and I'll show you where the pieces go.
 
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FallisPhoto said:
Be very careful when taking the faceplate off of the Tempor. Remember how I said that the springs are not hooked into place and are just braced against the shutter housing? Well, if you're not careful, and if they have worked their way to where they are not sitting level, they can fly off into the carpet when the faceplate comes off. They can carry off the parts they are attached to also.

If this happens, send me a photo of the shutter and the parts and I'll show you where the pieces go.
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Charles, this not only happens with Tempors but (occasionally) also with Compurs. :bang:

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hanskerensky said:
Charles, this not only happens with Tempors but (occasionally) also with Compurs. :bang:

4303967253_c4a2b1362b.jpg
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Yeah, but ALL the springs and other parts in the front of a Tempor are like that. There are no screws in there. It is just posts stuck in holes with parts threaded over them, and there are only two springs that are hooked to anything. The parts, under spring tension, can easily slip off of their posts (like the one in your hand did), and there is very little to prevent every spring in the shutter from taking flight. The hardest part of working on this thing is keeping it from flying apart. Looks like you lost two springs and a part. When I took the front off of my first Tempor, I was taking photos of it and the entire front section (with the sole exception of the shutter speed escapement) suddenly decided to vacate the housing. Took me four or five hours to find all the parts. I was lucky that I had managed to take two photos, so I knew what was missing.
 
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