Junk and Cheap Camera Month: Will it or won’t it work for me?

This camera came to me in a parcel from a new friend with a few other cameras. It was a sort of swap for the Yashica 44LM which I had previously passed on to him. That is one way to get new-to-you cameras, swaps with other collectors

I liked the look and feel of this one when I first picked it up. Unfortunately, the shutter seemed sticky. At times it would jam open and other times wouldn’t open at all. I put it in my junk box to look at later…now is later.

So a little about the camera. As you can see, the advance is under the camera and on my example, moved smoothly. In the view finder, there is a very faint white needle. It moves from side to side depending on the available light. The aim is to keep the needle out of a red bar. At first, I didn’t see this white needle at all. I thought it was missing. With that missing and the shutter issues, I believed the camera was truly broken. But, then I saw an image on this review and realized it was there after all, just very faint.

Around the lens barrel is a set of numbers and letters 6,5,4,3,2,M,B. They referred to the ASA of the film you load, there is a guide on the back of the camera. This sets the camera’s shutter speed too and it seems to match the ASA, well, pretty much.

As I said, the shutter was sticking. I have had some success unsticking shutters and I thought I would try it with this one. BUT, I could not gain access to the shutter blades. When I took off the front element, there was another lens underneath which would not budge. Well, maybe I could gain access from the back? Nope, that element was hard to reach and would not move either. I looked for screws to fully take it apart, but could see no way to gain access. There must be a way, but I couldn’t find it.

The shutter did seem to work in two settings, the 6 and 5. I could at least try the camera in one of those.

I loaded a 200ASA film, set the camera to 6. I knew the speed would be about 1/160th as that range was 160-200ASA.

Here are the results:

Did it work for me? Well, I tested it in ‘6’. and the exposure was fine. I didn’t test it in 5 but that seemed fine too. In all other settings the shutter was sticky. The light meter responded as it should. BUT, clearly there is a focusing issue. This was probably caused by me when I removed the front element. I had trouble getting it back on. I might have miss threaded it or fail to put it back in the right position. To be honest, I might not ever use this camera again even if I did fix the lens. So I think I will put it in the recycle box. However, I am tempted to get a Zorki 10 which is a copy of this camera but with a rangefinder.

…oh what the fudge, I will try and reset the lens, watch this space.

You can read more about this camera in these links:
https://austerityphoto.co.uk/to-boldly-go-where-no-fixed-focus-has-gone-before-ricoh-auto-35/
https://retrofilmcamera.com/ricoh-auto-35/
https://www.35mmc.com/16/05/2020/5-frames-with-a-ricoh-auto-35-by-tobias-eriksson/?utm_content=cmp-true

Addendum
I did reset the lens and tested the camera with some very old Kodak RAR film. I have previously used this for testing and rated it at 50asa. So I set the camera to 5 this time. Here are some of the results:

Yes! That is much better. Setting 5 seems to work well also. Occasionally the slow film and setting did result in camera movement, so I think 6 is better.

As long as this example is used in setting 6 with 100-200asa film, it should be fine for now. I won’t be the one using it though. As I got it for free, I am passing it along to someone else. 🙂