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Comment by ginko | Hacker News Reader

FixOldCameras mainly focuses on cameras from the 70s and earlier where electronics are nonexistent or fairly simple.

Late-90s cameras like the Nikon F100 are a different beast entirely. The only thing worse are probably compacts from that era like the Olympus mju. If something goes wrong there you can essentially give up on fixing it.

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Actually the 90s ones are generally terrible They are really complicated nests of parts and flex PCBs and cables. Unlike the newer ones, there's usually some older style stuff in there just to screw with you like soldered joints on inconveniently short single wires and glue.

I agree.

For me, the details of the Fix Old Cameras videos were less important than the approach and attitude applied to the problems.

But like I mentioned, I am not down the camera repair rabbit hole anymore. In part because of the intractability of many camera repairs.

Something I learned was that you will probably have to make tools, unless you have a really good optical wrench. Fortunately tricks like filing down pliers to make very small tips and filing in-between cheap screwdriver flats work really well. Years of SMT work finally paid off as some cameras require desoldering certain parts to get into the depths. The biggest risk is scratches where the OEM tooling otherwise fits perfectly, but I'm not that prissy over a 50 year old SLR. The repair guides from the manufacturers are pretty opaque and serve only to show where things go. Often they list tons of bespoke equipment and calibration tools that you won't have.

I don’t doubt it.

I switched to servicing musical instruments. It’s a much bigger market, much less collector focused, and often $1000 is not a lot for a musical instrument but a lot for a camera.

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