Weird mods, repaints, and customizations

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There's a thread up now about a meterless Canon 7, and it got me wondering what interesting modified cameras members here might have. Post your mods, repaints, prototypes, hybrids, customizations, and Frankenstein's monsters!
 
'Weird mods' ... I'm surprised Joe and Rover haven't been on to you about that title! 😛
 
I don't know if this counts, but I wanted a waist level finder for my M4-2, so instead of shelling out 300 bucks for a AUFSU, I hacked the finder off of a brownie box camera, sealed it up with cardboard and gaffer tape, and fabricated a shoe mount out of a holga 6x4.5 mask I had laying around. My rather uncouth friend dubbed it "the upskirter."
 
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not so weird, a rather logical mod...

Frank S. sent me this Hi-matic 7- it had a jammed shutter. that crap on the shutter blades is graphite powder... oil is a killer, graphite is not.

so- as usual, I got hyped. that viewfinder! c'est manifique! but, I always find problems- impossibly long wind stroke, stiff and loooong shutter release, it's not compact at all...

but tinkerer as I am, I fixed one- the shutter release. lemme explain halfway...
this camera has aperture priority. it has some rod coupling the aperture selector to the meter, and the aperture selector is kept up by spring pressure when the shutter release is not pressed. when you presse the shutter release, it travels a bit, traps the meter needle, then lets the aperture open up if necessary- how much it moves is determined by the needle postion. to sum up, all this stuff makes the shutter release annoyingly stiff and long... so I got rid of it.

I took out the rod and the plate things

aand the shutter release connects to a fork which sets off the shutter. I mis-aligned the two, the shutter release pin sits on the fork instead of being in between the uh, forks, of the fork. so what do i get for an hour's worth of tinkering when I should have been doing Physics problems? a shutter release that rivals that of my Canon gear. the stroke is short, it's light and the shutter is quiet. also, I de-soldered the flash contacts and never put 'em back, and I removed the eyepiece and in true Dragunov style, replaced it with electrical tape (thinner=better for spec wearers).

sorry if this is incoherent to you, it's a little late and the brain is fuzzy...

cheers.
 
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The most creative modification that I can remember seeing was back in the late 60's. Nikon had introduced an 8mm fish-eye for the F. It was the first fish-eye lens to hit the market, very expensive, and it made a full circular image. Shortly after that Pentax introduce the first full frame fish-eye, 17 or 18mm I believe.

Back then art directors and editors preferred 2 1/4 transparencies over 35mm. Murray Spitzer was a retired Miami Herald photographer and had an idea. He bought a Pentax fish-eye lens and lens flange and picked up an old Baby Speed Graphic. They had a focal plane shutter mounted in a leather covered mahogany body. His camera repair guy sawed off everything in front of the shutter mechanism and mounted a flat board with the Pentax lens flange the correct distance from the film plane. You could use the ground glass back if you liked, and get 12 shots on a roll of 120 film with a roll holder. Instead of 24mm circular pictures you got pix about 50mm in diameter. It was ugly as sin but it worked and it made money!
 
Drag, I love those Himatic mods. If I don't end up selling mine, I may have to take it under the knife. Am I right in assuming that the meter still works in manual mode, just having lost it's coupled-ness for AE?
 
Not nearly as interesting as the above posts, but my Leica M3 was a standard chrome SS model, and is now black paint with gorgeous black lizard skin instead of vulcanite. I also had Cathy Kuiper modify the rangefinder to focus down to 0.7 meters, and replace the weird strobe synch port on the back with standard PC socket.

I Love that camera!
 
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sleepyhead said:
Not nearly as interesting as the above posts, but my Leica M3 was a standard chrome SS model, and is now black paint with gorgeous black lizard skin instead of vulcanite. I also had Cathy Kuiper modify the rangefinder to focus down to 0.7 meters, and replace the weird strobe synch port on the back with standard PC socket.

I Love that camera!
Click to expand...

Who did the paint, Yaron?
 
i know most people here aren't into stereo cameras, but here are a couple of my custom ones...
the frankenpony is almost finished, i have to finish putting the internals back into it. the real difficulty with this one is finding two ponys that are exactly the same focal length. you have to have perfectly matched lenses for stereo.
the realist has lens and shutter assemblies from kodak signets. the lenses in those signets are super sharp and the shutter goes to 1/300 which is a bit faster than a regular realist. this one is a major pain in the *ss to use though.

bob
 

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LeicaTom said:
I have photos of two "Stepper" Leica IIIC`s put together for STEREO 😱

Tom
Click to expand...

i have a friend who has actually handled that camera, there is only one. he said it was not functional, it was just put together for show, looks really cool though. i think the owner lives in england.

bob
 
The only "weird mod" I have is a franken-lens. It's Wollensak glass mounted on the focusing barrel of an Olympus SLR lens and then mounted on an M-mount adapter. It focuses down to .45m but only couples to .7m on my M2. It's a surprisingly solid lens.

Don't ask me how to do it because I have no idea. I bought it like this.
 
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