REVIEWS: “...a must-have for all camera owners and do-it-yourselfers.”—Wedding and Portrait Photographers International

FROM THE BOOK:WHY NOT DO IT YOURSELF?: “Doing it yourself is in vogue today. From remodeling your kitchen to tuning your car and building your own house, there are how-to books on everything. On some subjects there are hundreds of titles to be read, but up until now there were precious few, if any, such books available on camera repair written in a comprehensive, how-to form. This manual offers immediate practical guidance that anyone can use, with or without previous experience. It is aimed at readers who want to repair their own cameras without learning the craft.”

DESIGN CONFIGURATIONS & THEIR CHARACTERISTICS: “The usual design configurations of the 35mm camera are the rangefinder, where the viewing and ranging system are separate from the taking lens, and the single-lens reflex (SLR) which has through-the-lens viewing. Either can be equipped with a lens-shutter or a focal-plane shutter. Further, their functions can be either mechanically or electronically controlled.”

SIMPLE DIAGNOSTIC TOOLS & METHODS: “This partial troubleshooting guide will concentrate on the most common problems of the standard camera configurations, and only ones that are relatively easy to diagnose and remedy. Five times out of ten the problem is either obvious right from the start or you stumble onto it visually once the covers are removed. The other five can be diagnosed by using your senses, logic and the troubleshooting guide below."

TEST INSTRUMENTS YOU CAN BUILD: “Most functions of the standard SLR and rangefinder cameras can be tested to ballpark-figure accuracy using your own senses. For more accurate testings, you can build the following instruments with a reasonable expenditure of labor. Material cost is minimal. The most often used instruments for testing cameras are the light meter tester, or standard light, the collimator, or focus tester, the shutter-speed tester and the EV, or exposure, tester. You can build any of these with very little effort and they will cost you only a few dollars.”

SPECS: 8.5 X 11, paperback, over 130 photos and illustrations, 176 pgs, index, appendices

Thomas Tomosy is a European trained master camera technician.