Skears Allay My Fears (and possible Tears), Cheers!

A camera is of course just a tool. At best a highly engineered precision tool, but a tool nevertheless. Merely the mechanics required to capture the whole point of photography, the photographic image. In this sense all cameras are alike within the constraints of what they're capable of delivering, because we all know that photography is principally about the photographer, everything else is just the tools required to deliver the image.

Of course the same is often said about those other old-fangled vehicles for information, vinyl records and books. All the value is in the music and wordy content, the data, not the physical means of delivery. All this information can be had at the touch of a keyboard these days, vinyl and paper have no intrinsic value and if you say otherwise your just a fetishist. It is said...

Which is of course a particular kind of proscriptive marketing bullshit, the kind of tech-cult nonsense that has lead us to the current half-baked shitshow of AI. A techy future that promises to release us from the terrible burden of physical interaction, something that we humans have enjoyed since the moment we were handed a rattle and a set of multi-coloured wooden bricks to play with. We like things. Some of us love things... some things at any rate.

So I got my broken FED 1 camera back, and boy did I miss it. So much so that I cheated repeatedly on it with another camera, eventually inviting another cheap Soviet Rangefinder into the house, just for fun you understand. Don't judge me, a month is a long time to go without something that feels so good in the hand, I think we can all agree on that.

My lovely Soviet-era camera has come back following a full service with several significant improvements, and all for just £54 which is a fair bit less than I was a-feared of, so top marks to Steve, the repair wizard at Skears Cameras, Northampton. It makes such a refreshing change to be able to heartily recommend a service like this, and the shop was beautifully air-conditioned on a very hot day when I collected the camera, so thanks for that too!

The most important repair was the jammed winding mechanism, not so much broken as (presumably) benefitting from a jolly good hoover and polish following the recent film shredding incident. I'm also assured that the shutter curtains are in good condition and all the shutter speeds should now work accurately. I was slightly concerned they were a smidge slow which is very common with cameras that have probably not been cleaned and lubricated for decades. Also what turned out to be a the slightly rusty pressure plate has been given a good polish, so that should hopefully eliminate the fine scratch lines I was getting across negatives.

I understand that it's standard practice to re-calibrate the Rangefinder optics when a camera is re-assembled, and this seems to have improved the accuracy. The Rangefinder on this camera should line-up on a very distant subject when the lens is in its locked 'infinity' position, but I found this was always slightly off. It now appears to be bang-on.

A big plus for me is the improvement in the Aperture adjustment which whilst useable was quite stiff to operate, a particular problem as it's pretty-much a thumbnail operation and I have a longstanding habit of biting my nails! Knowing how much work is involved in servicing these lenses I asked whether anything that could be done, but not to worry if it involved a full strip down. I'm delighted to say the lens has come back much improved.

One final piece of outstanding service from the Skears team was removing the 1/4 inch thread adapter from the Tripod Mount, restoring it back to its original 3/8 inch, a much easier job with the correct tool it seems.

1/4 inch is the standard for all but the biggest cameras now so it's no surprise the camera came with the adapter, but my best vintage Tripod is also a bit old-skool with the older thread size. It would also give me the opportunity to try this similarly vintage FED table clamp 'Tripod' doohickey that's been hanging around for some time now.

Cast in Aluminium to typically vague Soviet tolerances, if there's one accessory for these cameras you simply must have, I wouldn't in all honesty make it this one. Whilst it seems to work after a fashion, the weight of the camera on the base plate makes it feel like it's likely to bend it, not that the screw goes in particularly straight which probably doesn't help. I wouldn't want to clamp the rough alloy onto anything too precious neither, and as for the rather nasty looking attachment designed to actually screw into something!... 

On the plus side, it is pocketable, so I may fit some Felt padding on the wonky plate and give it a go now that I've loaded the camera up with some Ilford HP5 Plus 400, c/o my friend up the road who's gone back (forward?) to digital for the time being.