It’s already February, and no progress has been made. I tried replacing the batteries of my kodak, cleaning the contacts again, trying to rig a ghetto contact using tinfoil (stupid idea), and then finally googling to see if I could problem solve this.I wish my dad were here.He would have known exactly what to do to fix this. I’m sure it’s something simple, I just don’t know enough about electronics or super 8 cameras to know how to identify the problem.But he’s not here, and I have to figure this out by myself, which has been frustrating. After doing some more research, I think that the problem is that one of the battery contacts is not contacting with the battery, so the camera is getting power to run the motor, but not enough to spin the reel.I purchased a soldering iron kit today:
Oddly enough, one of my most distinct memories of my dad is of him toiling hunched over at the kitchen table with a magnifying glass stand w/alligator clips, and a soldering iron, listening to his old, 1970s radio.
From my research, corroded batteries, and thus, corroded contacts, seems to be a very common issue with old cameras like these. I noticed that some people had been soldering the contacts in order to fix this. Hopefully it works, although I have zero clue as to how to do this. All I know is that the hot pen tip of the soldering iron melts metal onto a designated location. Fingers crossed.In the meantime, I’m moving forward. I’ve begun scouring ebay for a replacement camera (exact match as the one I currently have), as well as a canon 814, which I’ve read is a reliable mid-priced camera. I’m extremely curious about a stop-motion animation function on the canons–something I experimented in the past, but have always wanted to do beyond this year of kodachrome documentation.To do this weekend:
- drop off some of dad’s film at the local film-to-dvd place (the goal is to develop a batch, then also try and set up my own system for re-recording film. I’ll get into this later)
- scan some of dad’s old slides
- purchase kodachrome film on ebay
- try and solder the battery contacts
Kind of ambitious for a weekend. I need to make up for lost time.
