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

This camera was another ‘gift’ from a friend who said, “If you can fix it, you can keep it.” I supposed if I couldn’t fix it then I would have to bin it.

The camera was in a bit of a state when I first got it. You can’t see now, but the battery cap was missing which initially stopped everything. Luckily, I have been saving caps from junk and broken cameras for a while. I have a small collection of spares. Unluckily, none of those fit 🙁

Nevermind, I have a junk box of cameras under my bed, maybe there was one in there that would fit? Yatta!! The one on the recently reviewed Centon DF-300 fit perfectly. That one didn’t need it anymore as I had decided not to keep it. Once that was in place and batteries installed, the camera lit up as it should. The first problem was solved.

The lens attached to the XR7 was in a terrible state, with a lot of fungus. I removed the front and back elements and gave them a very good clean. More unfortunate news though or ‘unluckily’, the fungus left marks on the glass and could not be fully restored. I decided to use it anyway and see if it made a difference to the photographs.

Before then, a little more about the camera. I didn’t find much when I searched XR7, just this great post by Alex Luyckx who liked it. The camera was also known as the Sears KS-2. I found a bit more information using those keywords, including this review by Jim Grey. It was released around 1987 and used K-mount lenses. That meant, if it worked, it would be a great camera to have for ‘dirty’ outings.

You can see by the photos, that it accepted film between 32-3200asa, has speeds up to 1/1000th, plus a coupled meter. The camera does not work without batteries so I am glad I found a cap that fit. On the back of the camera is a multiple exposure switch and button. To activate that function, you have to slide the switch to reveal a red dot. Then, press the button while advancing the film. Without pressing the button, the film will advance as normal. The switch locks the button.

So that’s it, now to find out if it actually worked. I loaded half a roll of FP4 which I had previously exposed in another junk camera. I then headed to Spike Island which I had not visited before.

Straight away, I noticed the infinity was slightly off and knew any close-up shots might be out of focus. I also knew I might be able to fix that if everything else was ok.

On developing the film, I found many of the shots were also over-exposed. Only the potentially underexposed ones were ok.

I managed to scan the results and I was right about the focusing, the closer ones were off. However, the exposure issue gave me pause as to whether I would try a fix for the focusing issue. Was it me? Did I do something wrong on the exposure side?

Here are the results for this short film though:

I had used the camera almost exclusively in auto mode, so I thought I would give it another chance. Maybe the auto was off?? This time, I decided to use it in manual mode with just a dip into auto. Before that point, I had to fix the infinity issue.

On the other camera I fixed with this issue, the washer around the mirror stop was missing. On this camera that washer was in place, but on the mirror plate was a dint. Some of the plate had been worn away. I wondered if this was the cause of the focusing problem. There was only one way to find out, fill in the hole. I used small strips of duck tape.

I do find that hole a bit odd, I have never seen anything like that before. Once the tape was in place, the camera focused on infinity without an issue, yatta!!

Now I could test the camera again, with a short roll just in case. This time I put in a half roll of expired Orwo.

Here are the next set of results. I stuck to subjects that would test the close-up focusing and the fix.

Yatta! You can see in the camera photos that I had changed the seals on the film door. The mirror seal also needs changing as it is crumbling on touch. Now I knew the camera worked, I will have to address that issue. Luckily, the damage from the fungus doesn’t seem to be affecting the images much or at all.

Did it work for me? Yes, eventually. It took a while. Despite the state of the camera, I enjoyed using it and fixing it. There is still a couple of issues to address such as the mirror seal and the lens. The focus ring moves smoothly, but the aperture ring is stiff. I will fix both of those things, but not right now. I am still suffering the after-effects of covid.

I don’t have anything left in my draft folder at the moment. I do have a couple of films to develop. I should be able to post a few more cameras next week to end this junk month.