Camera Talk

I recently purchased this design classic from our local auction site. It came complete with its original box, and looked to be in really nice condition. I shot a couple of test rolls with some battery bodgery until such time as some more PX625 adapters arrived. The camera seemed to be working fine.

When I got the PX625 adapters, and confirmed that it was actually made for alkaline batteries, I loaded it up with a short roll of Adox HR50. I grabbed the little Agfa along with a Voigtländer Vitomatic IIa which I've just finished repairing.

When I got back and developed the rolls, I was gutted to find only four shots on the roll from the Agfa. Four sequential shots in the middle of the roll, the remainder of the roll was blank. A bit of testing showed that the shutter was only firing occasionally. Putting the proper battery size/type in must have caused some issue with the battery connector. If I jiggled the connector around I could occasionally make the shutter fire, but not reliably. Such a disappointment as I really enjoyed the little Agfa. That, and I had noticed a small fungal growth in the corner of the large viewfinder, only really visible in certain lighting.

Only one thing for it - strip it down and see if I can effect a fix. The only problem being a distinct lack of repair guides, and I only found one older, low-res Japanese video showing some of the disassembly. Well, nothing to lose, if I can't fix it, it will have to be a display item.

Preparation.

1. Set focus ring to infinity (mountains), ISO to 25 & flash aperture to 22 Ripping into it

2. Remove beauty ring. This is stuck down with some sort of adhesive, so gently pry it off. I used a cut down razor blade to get under it, then gently went round with tweezers to pry it off. Be gentle, don’t bend it. 3. Remove two brass screws at 9 and 3 o’clock 4. Remove clear plastic ring 5. Remove black ISO ring 6. Remove three brass screws (these are longer than the first two) 7. Lift off focus symbol ring. Lift off grey gear wheel at 1 o’clock, noting direction of line (points towards flash symbol, though I don’t think this is important) 8. Lift off focus ring. Careful, there is a small ball bearing at 5 o’clock. Remove silver ring. Now is a good time to mark the lens infinity position 9. Carefully remove flash aperture ring, note small ball bearing at 7 o’clock (not shown in photo) - it sits under that little metal tab. Next, onto the body...

Body Disassembly

1. Remove the black screw in the right hand side of the film compartment 2. Remove the black screw (with two holes) from the base of the camera on the film door side 3. Remove the silver screw (with two holes) from the centre of the hot shoe 4. With something thin, flexible and quite strong (I used a razor blade with its sharp bits removed) and something like some spludgers or cut down credit cards, gently pry the body covering forward The fault
Now we can see what has happened. Green corrosive aliens have been munching on my wire. Not only this visible end, but also on the invisible battery compartment end. Which I can't get to! I make sure this is the reason for things not working by wiring direct from the battery compartment to the little tab. The shutter now works.
Now I need to put the thinking cap on to try and figure out how I can get a wire from this front tab back into the battery compartment without fouling any of the mechanism. I'll sleep on it.

The Surgery

Having slept on it, I decided to drill a small hole through from the battery compartment to the little gap between the film rewind shaft and the film chamber (on the left looking at the camera, lens towards you). No power tools involved, just an old fashion manual hand drill/driver (properly old fashioned as these drill bit holders were my Grandad's).

First up you'll need to remove the rest of the lens assembly. Remove the three silver screws around the lens assembly and gently lift off the assembly. There are three springs on the underside, but these are not the escaping types, they remain captive.
To gain a bit of access I removed the silver screw in the top left that holds the cable release actuator. Remove the screw, unhook the spring and remove the actuator.
Then remove the small brass screw buried in the centre. Note: I could not figure out how to remove the rewind knob which should have allowed the removal of the film wind mechanism. Removing the two screws gave me enough room to wiggle the film wind mechanism to give just enough room to get a 1.5mm drill bit through.

Through my superb skills and measurements (or more likely, sheer good luck), the drill bit came out right next to the battery compartment! Feed the wire (from a ethernet cable) through from the lens side into the film side. Strip and tin the wire, then tin the connector tab and solder. To make the connection more secure in the battery compartment, drill a 1.5mm hole through the silver battery tab. Strip this end of the wire, and tin the end, then feed the end up through the hole and shape to fit. Then solder the wire to the battery tab and shape it to fit.

Now give it a quick test with the back open. Note that since the camera body cover is not in place, it will only operate at the flash sync speed, and therefor the flash aperture ring is in operation. To test the speeds all work, you'll need to put the body cover back in place. With that all working, I then took the opportunity to clean the viewfinder and lens elements.

Then, as per the infamous lines of the Haynes workshop manual, simply reassemble in the reverse order!

And a few more photos of the shutter and film wind mechanisms.

Thanks for this, P.C. I love this classic / modern design and have two 1035 Sensors, which are probably similar to your Optima Sensor. Don’t know if they still work, because they have been in their box for years. Your pictures and explanations are valuable, there are not too many resources out there for these lovely Agfas.

Excellent rewire job, Paul! Back when I was really into collecting Agfa cameras, I tried to get some of the plastic later models but had a hard time locating any that weren't obviously broken (cracks in the outer shell were usually the biggest tell someone had tried to "fix" one). Battery corrosion has always been the bane of P&S cameras. Well, that and old plastic parts that just break off at the worst possible time.

PF

Great job!! I have two or three of them for parts, maybe fixable? I won’t mess with them, they came in a lot of a non working 1535…