How I (almost) repaired a film camera

So two years ago, when my roommate moved out, she gave me a broken film camera. She was in a rush so she just dropped it on my desk and asked “since you are into photography, do you want to keep this camera?”

"Yeah, why not.” I said.

It’s a vintage Zeiss Ikon Symbolica. I was busy at that time so I just kept the camera on my desk as a decoration. Months later, I finally picked it up, only to find that the shutter, the film advance lever, and the film rewind knob were all broken.

I was only able to fix the advance lever. It was a rather easy fix, it’s simply because of a loose spring. Limited by the basic tools I had, I can only access some internal space of the camera. I had no idea how to fix the shutter and the film rewind knob.

Fast forward to yesterday, for no apparent reason (probably just tired of research), I decided to open it up and see if I can fix it again. I’ve got much better tool that I picked up for replacing the thermal paste in my graphics card last winter. So let the hacking begin!

First I have to open up the top case (silver metal in the picture). Just two screws, easy enough. Then there was the components that contains the light meter (left), the view finder (middle), and the film counter (right).

Now here is the first problem: the film rewind knob wold not work when I turn the film rewind lever. And that’s because there was a missing gear! No wonder the rewind lever was so loose that I could pull it out completely from the camera before I opened it up.

So the next step is the find the missing gear. Luckily, I noticed that there was a rattling noise when I move the camera around. Probably the gear is somewhere inside the body? I tried to further dissemble the camera from atop, but it was rather difficult.

So I have to look somewhere else. There seems to be a huge space between the lens and the body, so probably the missing gear went there? I found four screws that seemed to be the ones that connect the lens compartment and the main body together in the film compartment.

These screws are really hard to access, but I managed to eventually loosen them. And here is what it looks like with the lens removed. Then I noticed there are two transmission mechanisms that connect the shutter release button on the body and the actual shutter in the lens.

I suspect that Transmission A is the primary mechanism, because the body-side of it moves when I press the shutter release button. The Transmission B body-side knob turns when I push the film advance lever. I know A should activate the shutter, but not sure what B is.

So the shutter problem is likely to be something wrong with the lens compartment, so I will leave it here for now. Luckily, the gear just fell out when I separated the lens compartment.

After putting it back, the film rewind knob works like a charm.

(I apologize for the shaky video as I only have one hand to hold the film camera).

But what about the broken shutter? Well, my screwdriver is not small enough the loosen the screws on the lens compartment. They are much more delicate than the screws on the body and I didn’t want to risk damaging the screws.

Plus, fixing shutter seems to be super complicated according to some YouTube video of fixing other film camera. This camera is extremely undocumented, so if I were to fix it I would be totally on my own. I decided to give up, at least for now.

So that’s how I (almost) fixed my film camera as a fun 2-hour adventure after a full day of work. My neck was all stiff afterwards. I hope I can fully fix it someday. Someday, you know.