Photo equipment of the 1980s: Suffering from surprisingly banal problems

Andreas Thaler · Jan 26, 2025

It is interesting that - as far as my experience so far - the complex and sophisticated electronic photo devices of the 1980s often suffer from surprisingly banal problems.

In the case of the Minolta 7000 AF

it is evidently a slight contamination of two contact surfaces of a switching magnet that disables the aperture control. And not a fault in the complex electromechanics.

It seems to be similar with the Minolta 9000 AF

here there, apart from a contaminated magnet, is also a piece of plastic in the shutter that is disintegrating, a misaligned mirror caused by the wear of a damping plastic pad in the mirror box and a blocked mechanism.

All of these are trivial errors in themselves, which sometimes become major problems because they require extensive disassembly work to fix.

The same applies to the Nikon F4

whose aperture control can be repaired with a small drop of oil, or to the Canon T90, whose magnets can also fail due to contamination.

In most cases, as far as can be seen, there are no electronic components or mechanical parts broken. Apart from leaking electrolytic capacitors and forgotten batteries.

The first mentioned electrolytic capacitors plague the

Minolta Autowinder G for the Minolta X cameras

and probably also the almost identical D version. Replacing the two leaking capacitors and the previously crazy winder works reliably again.

It is therefore worth continuing to research these impressive works of ingenious Japanese engineering and finding ways to make repairs easier.

Shortcuts in the spirit of Thomas Tomosy:

Often you use a shortcut to avoid excessive disassembly, thereby reducing the risk of damaging the camera. The more work you do and the deeper you dig inside, the more chance you have of causing some damage. Keep the best repair method foremost in mind. Other considerations should come second.

Thomas Tomosy, Camera Maintenance & Repair, Book 1, Buffalo: Amherst, 1999

ogtronix · Jan 26, 2025

I think it's a shame the East Germans didn't remain competitive into the microelectronics and autofocus era. I'd like to see what they'd have come up with. They had a different approach to designing consumer devices with revisions and iterations on prior concepts to produce generally robust, well laid out, and affordably produced machines. Which contrasted against the Japanese tendency to rush things to market and throw the baby out with the bathwater on the design, inventing all kinds of horrors and hard to predict systemic failures unique to each model, along with heavy consumer market bracketing that resulted in no camera from each generation ever being truly satisfactory in its set of features and capabilities.

There's a wake of all kinds of wacky gizmos from the era that were trying out all kinds of dumb ideas to one-up competitors or to squeeze the consumer for more profit, and in hindsight its fun to pick through all that mess... but i'm cautious about developing too much reverence for it. Hesitant to start mistaking novel, bizarre, and over-complicated solutions to problems, ones that couldn't be solved more satisfactorily before a deadline, for good design. In the end good design tends to be boring and familiar, like a door handle that's survived over 50 years of constant use, so there's a tendency to mistake wacky and bizarre solutions as something amazing, like some trending on Google Buzz zany steampunk door that only had to last as long as the video shoot.

Andreas Thaler · Jan 26, 2025

But these Japanese cameras are works of art and last for decades, even with heavy use, surprisingly well.

I don't want to compare a Minolta with a Praktica. Of course, these are also admirable technical achievements, especially since the GDR did not have the same options as the West.

But these cameras are not without problems either.

ogtronix · Jan 26, 2025

The only Praktica I don't like is the B200 and equivalents. I think they were in a rush to try catch up, struggled to navigate patents (and came up with some novel compromises), and had to outsource the actual microelectronics design cuz the Soviet Union really dropped the ball on that stuff. And the reason I don't like them is because it's the only East German camera i've struggled to disassemble without a detailed service manual... and it's annoying because they look cool. Every other one is so conscious of the idea of repairability that they're built in a highly modular manner that just makes sense. Even the BX20, which I assume was designed in a more relaxed environment after they'd accepted they had no hope of competing with the autofocus cameras...

4season · Jan 26, 2025

ogtronix said:
I think it's a shame the East Germans didn't remain competitive into the microelectronics and autofocus era. I'd like to see what they'd have come up with. They had a different approach to designing consumer devices with revisions and iterations on prior concepts to produce generally robust, well laid out, and affordably produced machines. Which contrasted against the Japanese tendency to rush things to market and throw the baby out with the bathwater on the design, inventing all kinds of horrors and hard to predict systemic failures unique to each model, along with heavy consumer market bracketing that resulted in no camera from each generation ever being truly satisfactory in its set of features and capabilities.

There's a wake of all kinds of wacky gizmos from the era that were trying out all kinds of dumb ideas to one-up competitors or to squeeze the consumer for more profit, and in hindsight its fun to pick through all that mess... but i'm cautious about developing too much reverence for it. Hesitant to start mistaking novel, bizarre, and over-complicated solutions to problems, ones that couldn't be solved more satisfactorily before a deadline, for good design. In the end good design tends to be boring and familiar, like a door handle that's survived over 50 years of constant use, so there's a tendency to mistake wacky and bizarre solutions as something amazing, like some trending on Google Buzz zany steampunk door that only had to last as long as the video shoot.

I don't know that DDR's efforts to be a world power in semiconductor manufacturing were ever going to amount to anything more than a DDR-sized money-pit without an actual market for said products.

My recollection of the camera market of the 1970s-90s is that the world was hungry for "tech", and it seemed that everyone wanted a computerized, motorized camera with dedicated flash, and always, more speed.

Andreas Thaler · Jan 27, 2025

4season said:
My recollection of the camera market of the 1970s-90s is that the world was hungry for "tech", and it seemed that everyone wanted a computerized, motorized camera with dedicated flash, and always, more speed.

I remember 1985, when I was a student and wanted to invest the money from a summer job in a factory in my first SLR.

Nikon was far too expensive, so I had to choose between the Canon A-1 and the Minolta X-700, which was newer than the A-1.

Everything at Minolta was more modern, more colorful, more cheerful. The marketing and the brochures were really addictive for me and still seem modern and up-to-date today. There were also books on the system by several authors. I learned the brochure for the X-700 by heart at night.

Then suddenly the Minolta 7000 AF appeared, which overshadowed everything else. Incredible things were on display: an LCD monitor on the camera, AF in the housing, built-in motor, new push-button operation, intelligent flash control, etc.

But ultimately it was outside my budget, so I bought an X-700, whose system was big at the time and still had some future.

It was an exciting time to experience a dormant camera market; it was the peak season for photography magazines and the Internet had not yet arrived.

4season · Jan 29, 2025

Andreas Thaler said:
Then suddenly the Minolta 7000 AF appeared

Peak 1980s techno vibe!

ogtronix · Jan 29, 2025

Between it and the Canon T80, I really wish that era of cool angular styling lasted a little longer before stuff went bulbous.

reddesert · Jan 30, 2025

Andreas Thaler said:
It is interesting that - as far as my experience so far - the complex and sophisticated electronic photo devices of the 1980s often suffer from surprisingly banal problems.

...

In most cases, as far as can be seen, there are no electronic components or mechanical parts broken. Apart from leaking electrolytic capacitors and forgotten batteries.

I don't have nearly the experience of tearing into electronic and electromechanical cameras that you and others have, but I have some experience with repairing other electronic items, such as amplifiers and guitar effect pedals, and with discussing such stuff on the internet. For something like a guitar pedal, it is often a lot easier to work on than a camera because it's less miniaturized. What I find is that people will often assume that a failure is due to the most complex or rare part, such as a semiconductor, irreplaceable IC or microcontroller, etc. Sometimes they'll go crazy and start replacing capacitors before diagnosing the problem (this probably is transference from vintage tube amps, where one actually may need to replace the big capacitors). But it's usually something dumb like a switch or a weakened solder joint.

Andreas Thaler · Jan 30, 2025

reddesert said:
Sometimes they'll go crazy and start replacing capacitors before diagnosing the problem (this probably is transference from vintage tube amps, where one actually may need to replace the big capacitors). But it's usually something dumb like a switch or a weakened solder joint.

That's good news!

This gives you a chance to find and fix the error, which is difficult with ICs because the problems start with the soldering.

Photo equipment of the 1980s: Suffering from surprisingly banal problems

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