John Hermanson wrote:
> I see many of the OM-1s with locked up mirrors. The owner panics, pulls
> the mirror down with finger, bends all the levers inside. Then mirror
> lock doesn't work anymore.
>
Long, long ago, a young Moose bought a second lens (100/2.8) for his
just out of warranty OM-1on a Friday before he was to leave for a
vacation in Mexico on Sunday or Monday. While playing around looking
through the new lens and dry firing the camera, the viewfinder suddenly
remained blank after a 'shot'.
Careful investigation revealed that no user error had occurred, the
mirror lock-up was not engaged, the mirror was stuck in up position and
he seems to recall that the shutter wouldn't wind. So young Moose gently
pulled the mirror down against moderate resistance with his finger,
cocked the shutter and fired again. Everything seemed to work except
that the mirror required manual resetting after every shot. Not the
ideal situation, but at least he could take pictures with it.
Peering at the cross section of the OM-1 from a photo magazine, it
appeared that whatever was wrong was fairly deep inside, not a casual
project while getting ready for the trip. So he packed up the gear and
the worldwide list of official repair stations. Fortunately, he was
staying in Mexico City for the first few days and was able to fairly
easily visit the repair facility there.
In a rather uninviting building in the old Centro, there was an office
with wooden counter with the banners of all the major Japanese camera
makes. Not to confidence inspiring. But when up to the counter, one
could then see off to the left was a metal framed glass room full of
shiny, immaculate equipment and a couple of Japanese technicians in
white lab coats. Hmm, looks ok. The nice but clueless young woman on the
counter listened to our (His late wife was born in Mexico City and spoke
perfect Spanish) detailed description of the problem. She went off with
the camera to see the techs.
She came back and said "Muy caro" very expensive. Further detail
revealed that her idea of expensive and ours were quite different.
Memory fades, but I think it was something like $27. Even in the early
'70s, that was considerably less than I could expect to pay in the US.
Then the key question, how long? Back to the techs, big apology, they
couldn't possibly get it done today, would tomorrow late morning be ok?
Would it?? OH yeah! So for the expenditure of a few $ and maybe 4 hours
of their time traveling across the city and back twice, his OM-1 worked
flawlessly for the rest of the trip. and indeed works today with no
other problems over the 30 years since, other than foam rot that he was
able to repair himself.
Moose
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