P3D older FED fixes

[Mark Shields <beamsplitter@xxxxxxxx>]

I have discovered a couple of FED fixes--one perhaps new, the
other perhaps a twist on an old one. This is, as best I can
determine, an early FED Stereo-M from about 1992, which has
a sleeve to use an SR44 silver oxide battery, but still gives
f/2.8 on B. The instructions waffle about which battery to use
but the Russian manual has the old battery designation
crossed out at several places and SR44 inked in.

The film back was too long, so when it was moved to the film
advance side, the lip on that end would pop out of the groove
in the body and release itself. There is a sort of shelf on
the rewind crank end of the body, where the back latch is, with
a couple of screws on either end. This is what holds the back
on that side. I cut pieces of Radio Shack black plastic electrical
tape to fit this area, making them narrow enough, and cutting out
the area around the back latch. I tried the back after each time.
After six pieces, the back was snug but had a tiny bit of play
so that it would slide on smoothly. The tape also has a somewhat
slippery surface, which helps. The tape's being black seems to
have eliminated any light leak problems at this point, although
I haven't had it out in the sun a lot. The chrome rod light leak
still seems to be present despite my efforts to stop it.

Film advance was horrible but was greatly improved by putting
a spacer in the bottom of the film cartridge chamber. Others
have mentioned "pad" without specifying material or placement.
I built up the small well at the very bottom so it would prevent
downward movement of the film spool itself. I used 1/3 pieces
of 5.25 floppy disk write protect labels (black ones) and rounded
the corners off to fit the well. I think I got about 12 layers
in there before the spacer prevented the film from jumping out
of its channel in the camera body upon downward cartridge
movement. The cartridge can now not move that far any longer.
It will now handle 24-exposure rolls pretty well. It doesn't do
well with 36-exposure rolls. It sometimes skips frames in the
middle of a roll--clicking off a couple of pairs while the
lenses are covered and advancing the film will get you past it.
And at a certain point, shy of the specified 21 exposures, it
will just stop. At this point, but not earlier in the roll,
there is sometimes actual sprocket hole tearing, scraping off the
emulsion between holes. Earlier slippage is within the winding
mechanism itself.

I'm still pondering the refusal of the meter needle to move past
a certain point on the scale. I suspect the little steel ball
which is supposed to act as a detent for the film speed dial
has somehow found its way inside, but I don't know. So I've
been doing manual exposures, and thinking of ways to install
a manual needle to give manual programmed exposure as my brother
said he did with a previous trapped-needle camera. This would
allow higher shutter speeds than the present 1/30 second on
manual. It's also possible that another meter movement could be
adapted, but that might cause problems in autoexposure linearity.

The FED has been doing very well with stereo yearbook shots
on 24-exposure rolls of Gold Max 800 indoors, and I enjoy
using it. It sure gets a lot of comments from photo subjects
and passersby! And that big 24X30mm image area makes for prints
which are easy to crop! FED users, and those of other European
format cameras, may be interested to hear that a local pro
lab which makes machine prints is handling processing for me
with no special considerations other than returning the negatives
as an uncut strip. They say otherwise everything is normal--
the prints have narrow black bands on either side which are easily
trimmed off. It would seem that a lot of labs could probably
do the same. If anyone is interested, they said that they would
handle mail orders, even though they don't do it very much.

For those who don't want to experiment with older stuff,
Steve Berezin guarantees the new ones he sells and reports
that they are doing very well. Certainly the FED BOY is
desireable with its f/5.6 on B and click stops on focusing.

Mark Shields

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beamsplitter@xxxxxxxx
http://www.stmattpitt.org
"Let the little children come to Me," Jesus said, "and don't keep
 them away. The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."
  -Matthew 19:14



 

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