Spent months trying to rebuild shutters with OEM parts until I tried grinding my own from a broken Minolta

Had a stuck shutter on a Praktica LTL3 that no off-the-shelf part would fix, so I hacked down a scrap curtain from an old Minolta SRT with an X-acto knife and it synced perfectly at 1/125, anyone else found junk cameras more useful than buying new parts?

2 comments

2 Comments

iris_rivera441mo ago

and honestly once you start hacking up junk cameras for parts it opens up a whole new world of fixing stuff. ive got a box of old broken bodies that ive cannibalized for screws, springs, and shutter curtains that would cost way too much to buy separately. its almost like theres this secret parts ecosystem out there that nobody talks about but every repair person eventually figures out.

aaron6771mo ago

oh man, same here. ive got this shoebox under my desk full of old minoltas and pentaxes that i just scavenge for random screws and tiny springs. its like a whole secret world of free parts once you stop caring about keeping the donor cameras whole. saves so much money compared to buying individual pieces online.