Yashica Electro 35 Professional Overhaul

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baloneygeek

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Hi fellow RFF'ers,

This forum has been a valuable resource; thanks to this place I found out about Yuri from Fedka and I'm going to Ukraine in the next couple of days to pick up a FED.

Now for the subject of this post. I got my dad's old Yashica Electro 35. It was probably last used about 15 years ago (probably by me when I was a kid), and now it needs to be overhauled. I'm fairly certain the light seals need replacement, the lens needs to be completely disassembled and cleaned because there's fungus on the elements, and the whole camera needs a good cosmetic cleanup. Otherwise mechanically it seems to be in great condition, and without a battery the shutter seems to be firing well at 1/500.

What I'd like help with (if anyone can) is where to get this done. I'm located in Germany, and in order of preference I'd like to send it to a place in DACH, Europe, Japan and then the USA. It's a family hierloom with some amount of history so I'd like to have it done well, cost no bar (well, unless it ends up costing me thousands of Euros), and get it to a condition where I can use it daily.

Thanks in advance,
Boud
 
The Electro 35 is a quite straightforward camera to service - any repairmen would be able to service it to good standards. For sure there are people in Germany capable and willing to have a look at it.
 
I would suggest testing with a battery first to verify that the electronics are good. Components such as capacitors can fail- I've had this happen on Electro type cameras from the 60s. IF the electronics are working, this should be a straight-forward job.
 
I've had a heck of a time finding camera shops in Germany who will even touch a camera that's not a Leica, Zeiss, Rollei or anything else that's not German. So far I've emailed a couple of shops in Germany and one in Switzerland and they've all said "sorry, but we don't repair that type of camera".
 
baloneygeek said:
I've had a heck of a time finding camera shops in Germany who will even touch a camera that's not a Leica, Zeiss, Rollei or anything else that's not German. So far I've emailed a couple of shops in Germany and one in Switzerland and they've all said "sorry, but we don't repair that type of camera".
Click to expand...

They refuse because, what you want them to do will cost you the same as 5 functional Electro 35 from ebay.
There’s a guy in Sweden that is recommended on some Rollei forums. He speaks highly of the Electro 35 - no personal experience though http://www.analogakameror.se/
When approaching you may consider suggesting part prepayment to avoid the perceived risk that you back out when you have to pay the €500 bill.
 
Nitroplait said:
They refuse because, what you want them to do will cost you the same as 5 functional Electro 35 from ebay.
There’s a guy in Sweden that is recommended on some Rollei forums. He speaks highly of the Electro 35 - no personal experience though http://www.analogakameror.se/
When approaching you may consider suggesting part prepayment to avoid the perceived risk that you back out when you have to pay the €500 bill.
Click to expand...

What !?!

500 Euros to service a Yashica? Miles Whitehead serviced my Nikon F4 and paid £80. Alan Starkie charges less than £200 to overhaul a Barnack Leica (spare parts included).

If he charges 500Euros, i would stay away from him.
 
p.giannakis said:
What !?!

500 Euros to service a Yashica? Miles Whitehead serviced my Nikon F4 and paid £80. Alan Starkie charges less than £200 to overhaul a Barnack Leica (spare parts included).

If he charges 500Euros, i would stay away from him.
Click to expand...

Did you read what OP wants done? A complete lens teardown, fungus etc. I have no idea what the Swedish guy will say, but I just had a Leica IIIf and Elmar 50/3,5 cla’d at Will van Mannen and it cost €550. A complete teardown takes the time it takes. It doesn’t matter if the camera is valuable or not. But your reaction shows exactly why nobody wants to touch OP’s camera.
 
Nitroplait said:
Did you read what OP wants done? A complete lens teardown, fungus etc. I have no idea what the Swedish guy will say, but I just had a Leica IIIf and Elmar 50/3,5 cla’d at Will van Mannen and it cost €550. A complete teardown takes the time it takes. It doesn’t matter if the camera is valuable or not. But your reaction shows exactly why nobody wants to touch OP’s camera.
Click to expand...

These are insane prices to pay. Just to give you a few examples which are all complete overhauls, Harrow technical charges £160 for overhauling a Pentax LX, Youxin Ye charges 230 dollars to service an Leica M3, John Hermanson charges 120 dollars to overhaul an OM-1n, and Alan Starkie charges £262 to overhaul an M2/M3 and replace parts.

500 euros for a Yashica overhaul is insane no matter what the OP wants. He better shop around and even send it to Mark Hama in the US - still he will pay less.
 
Post some pictures of the lens.

The light seals are easy to replace. I use self-sticking foam rubber from the local arts and Crafts section of Walmart. It works. The lens- post some shots of how bad off it is. I'll take a look at a parts camera I have in the basement. I've not taken apart the lens of a Yashica, buy have popped the top to clean the VF/RF. Some gotchas- but not a hard job.
 
p.giannakis said:
These are insane prices to pay. Just to give you a few examples which are all complete overhauls, Harrow technical charges £160 for overhailing a Pentax LX, Youxin Ye charges 230 dollars to service an Leica M3, John Hermanson charges 120 dollars to overhaul an OM-1n, and Alan Starkie charges £262 to overhaul an M2/M3 and replace parts.

500 euros for a Yashica overhaul is insane no matter what the OP wants. He better shop around and even send it to Mark Hama in the US - still he will pay less.
Click to expand...

The OP's camera is worth many times over its physical value due to a sentimental connection between father and son, so please don't chide him if he should so choose to use the gent from Sweden. If it's worth it to him to return his father's camera to working order or better, that's his business.

The big reason that the original Contax SLR's (Contaflex 1 thru 4) never caught on was they were so over engineered that even simple repairs were too costly for the general public to stomach, and the repairers started getting stuck with cameras that the owners would not pay the bill for. I overhauled one that unknown to me had been fiddled with by someone who thought they knew what they were doing, and it took me four tries before I discovered what they had done. Granted, I had no manuals to go by, and it was something that was down low in the lever traps on the shutter and impossible to see. But even at that, it took many times taking the camera apart and putting it back together before I was confident enough to say it was repaired. But the main reason that many repair shops will not work on Yashicas is they just are not familiar with them, and would rather stick with what they know.

At least if Boud has to send it to Sweden it would still be within the EU, so less hassle sending it in and getting it back. And if the repairer should have a stock of parts cameras all the better because Boud will not want to get that communication that a parts search needs to be undertaken before anything else can be done. He doesn't sound like he would want to do any of the work himself either, so well worth it getting it repaired by someone who does good work on them.

The Yashica Professional is not exactly the same as an Electro 35 G either, and actually precedes that series. Fewer of them were produced, and there are three different variants that I know of. Plus the Yashica rangefinder cameras, while seeming to be a simple camera, really have some innovative and uncommon mechanisms inside that require some knowledge as to their working, and proper settings adjustments. Best left up to someone who has some experience working on them whether they are a professional repairer or an enthusiast.

PF
 
p.giannakis said:
These are insane prices to pay. Just to give you a few examples which are all complete overhauls, Harrow technical charges £160 for overhauling a Pentax LX, Youxin Ye charges 230 dollars to service an Leica M3, John Hermanson charges 120 dollars to overhaul an OM-1n, and Alan Starkie charges £262 to overhaul an M2/M3 and replace parts.

500 euros for a Yashica overhaul is insane no matter what the OP wants. He better shop around and even send it to Mark Hama in the US - still he will pay less.
Click to expand...

Your examples are supporting my point. You are only mentioning cameras, not lenses. Your example of £262 (equals €305): Add to that the cost of a lens teardown to remove fungus and DHL return shipping and you have easily reached €500.
As soon as you move outside of EU you will have to add higher cost of shipping, import tax and custom clearance fees.

Certainly the price is only speculations on my part and some pragmatic repair tech around the corner may charge only €100, but when fungus enters the equation there are potentially a lot work involved.
I can only imagine a that a repair tech thinks somethings like "by the time I have used hours on the camera and presented the customer with a bill of €250, €400 or whatever, he may well have changed his mind and I am left with a camera w fungus echings in the lens that will fetch €75 on ebay".
You don't have that problem with an M3 because it will be worth more than the repair.

The important point I am trying to make is that one repair tech hour cost the same regardless of the value of the camera AND people (in general) tend not to accept that a repair cost more than the value of the object itself, so the smart repair tech will refuse to do the work to avoid discussions of that nature - the talented repair techs has a waiting list anyway.

I am sorry if I give the impression that the Swedish repair tech is expensive. As I noted - I have no idea!
I mention him only because he is recommended in another context, and he claims on his homepage that he loves the Electro 35 which is normally a good sign.
http://www.analogakameror.se/Electro.html (Use google translate to see what he writes) - most Scandinavians speaks english, so OP could just shoot him a mail to get his assessment - rather than listen to my speculations.
 
farlymac said:
You could try the member monopix at MONOPIX - Copyright © 2011 Peter Robinson. All rights reserved.

PF


Dang, sorry, that link doesn't work anymore. I don't know if he has retired or what. Maybe contact him directly through the Forum.
Click to expand...

I'm here! But that website disappeared years ago.

Website links below.

If the OP wants to contact me I'm happy to discuss.

Edit: Seems we no longer have signatures (where my web links once were) so my web address is http://www.contax-yashica-repairs.co.uk
 
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