That week where I fixed 4 Kodak Retinas in 5 days

Last Tuesday someone walked in with a Retina IIIc that had a stuck shutter. By Friday I'd had three more Retinas come through the door. All different models, all with the same slow speeds issue. Made $380 total off those four jobs. Never seen that many of those cameras at once in my 12 years doing this. Has anyone else had a weird run like that with one specific camera model?

2 comments

2 Comments

blaker751mo agoMost Upvoted

The slow speeds issue is almost always old grease in the shutter mechanism. Retinas are notorious for it. A drop of naphtha on the right pivot points usually frees things up without needing a full teardown. Just be careful not to get any on the lens elements or the shutter blades themselves. The IIIc and IIIS models have a different shutter setup than the earlier ones, so you have to treat each one different. Glad to hear you got a decent payout for the work, that kind of concentration of one model can be a blessing or a curse depending on how tricky they are.

rowan_thomas1mo ago

Yeah, "treat each one different" is exactly right. I've worked on a few Retinas and it's wild how much variation there is even between the same model year. Some of those IIIc shutters are actually a bit easier to access the pivot points if you know where to look, but the IIIS is a whole different beast with that Synchro-Compur setup. You really have to develop a feel for each one because forcing it can mess up the timing worse than the old grease ever did. And honestly, the concentration of one model is a double-edged sword like you said, because once you've seen a hundred of them, you notice every little quirk, but one bad batch can really test your patience.