Whoops, there goes another one

[Greg M]

  My cameras are generally 1975 and older, as classic as i can find, with the exception of one Nikon N90, seldom used.  I do a lot of bargain hunting and often find a good model with a few problems that really don't affect shooting. For example, my $30.00 Pentax K2 works fine on manual and timed exposures but has a shot light meter. Solution: sunny 16 or hand-held meter.  My 85-205 Pentax zoom has a sticky shutter but I keep working it.  When they quit working I donate them to a charity or offer them on one of my photo forums for shipping. (Strangely the voigtlanders keep going and going, one model is over fifty years old, works great for ten years now).  I then hunt for a replacement.
I can't afford to repair them at one hundred dollars or more when I only paid around fifty dollars or less. 
   Is this logical? Does anyone else do this.
   
 

[JohnV]

The practical side-economics tells us to replace for lower cost than repair. There's a slow learning curve for DIY, right? My only (fairly) modern camera is N90S. However, it is going to get weekly exercise.

[Tourist]

Today for the first time I threw away a camera. It was badly faulty Minolta SRT101 given to me by someone. There was absolutely no hope to get it running again, even my trusty repair guys didn't want it for spares. I felt bad when I dropped it into the garbage bin.

[Austintatious]

I am a lot like you. I pick them up for as little as possible, in as nice a condition as I can. Then I look for someone to do the CLA for less money than the "known" folks.
Just got a FED II back from Eddy Smolov. His work is first rate and cost less than Fedka. So now I have a great looking camera and it works like new and my total
investment is around a hundred bucks. I have done the same with Yashica GTNs, Pentax ME Super and a nice Minolta 102. Each one is used monthly,if possible. I really
don't have any "shelf queens" in my collection. All are functioning well. I keep thinking I should get a nice DSLR, and do less film, but it is hard to justify an investment
of about a grand when I can pick up another wonderful film camera and CLA it for around a hundred or so.

Charles

[LarryD]

I am a lot like you. I pick them up for as little as possible, in as nice a condition as I can. Then I look for someone to do the CLA for less money than the "known" folks.
Just got a FED II back from Eddy Smolov. His work is first rate and cost less than Fedka. So now I have a great looking camera and it works like new and my total
investment is around a hundred bucks. I have done the same with Yashica GTNs, Pentax ME Super and a nice Minolta 102. Each one is used monthly,if possible. I really
don't have any "shelf queens" in my collection. All are functioning well. I keep thinking I should get a nice DSLR, and do less film, but it is hard to justify an investment
of about a grand when I can pick up another wonderful film camera and CLA it for around a hundred or so.

Charles

And this is why many of us me included are known as "Bottom Feeders."

[Greg M]

    I have an Olympus Om-1 with a Zuiko 1.8 I just picked up for $20.00. The back was loose so I put a piece of black duct tape on it, the foam backing was gone so I replaced it with some weather seal, Cleaned the focusing screen.  The prism has a small dent in it (doesn't affect viewing), and the negatives I got back from my last outing look great.  More fun than when I had a new one back in 1977 and was afraid to use it.

[Pompiere]

I try to check out a camera thoroughly but, when I find a camera that doesn't work, I'll take a chance if it's only a few dollars.  When I found a Yashica TL  Electro X for only $3, I thought it would be a good intro to screw-mount lenses, even though it was stuck on 1/1000.  After some searching on the net, and a few hours with a soldering iron, q-tips and foamies,  I got all the speeds to work.  The meter doesn't work (yet), but I am not a fan of stop down metering anyhow.  Not all of my cameras came to me not working, but they are the ones I treasure the most.

[polka]

I have got a konica Autoreflex T with its 1.8/52mm Hexanon for almost nothing, because the shutter was jammed, but I had it working again in five minutes (removing only the bottom plate and fiddling a little inside). Then even the automatic exposure worked all right, perfect. After that, I had to disassemble the lens to clean the focusing screw, because it was so hard !!! And for a final touch, I readjusted the mirror so to get back really accurate focusing (better than new).

Now it's one of my best (and prefered) classic SLR (cost me less than 10$)

Paul

[LarryD]

Another one saved from the grave.

[br1078lum]

I'm not one to junk cameras either, but sometimes you just have to put them out of their misery.  Take the Kodak X-15 I got in a bunch of cameras that had a broken door.  Trash, no regrets.  I had an X-45 many years ago when they were new, and when the winder went kablooie on it, I decided to see what made it tick.  Most of the support posts were just melted over pins, so there was no fixing anything without some major reconstruction.  I may still have the lens somewhere.  But other than that, I will keep a camera even if all it is good for is a paperweight.  You can also mount them on bookends as an artistic statement.  I have an old Mamiya SLR that I got for $2 that since it had been underwater, was definitely destined for the junkpile.  But I opened it up so I can show folks just how complex the inside of the older cameras were before all the electronics took over.