Sony Week - Part Five - The Repair Department Secret

Be prepared to be frustrated - I am going to tease you unmercifully in this column.

Normally I don't do this - the idea, after all, is to entertain you and win your loyalty to Camera Electronic. To entice you to come on down and leave your money on the counter. So I don't berate you and I don't make false promises - and I don't dance around telling you that I know something that you don't. Until now.

Oh, it's not just me. It's the staff in the Camera Electronic Repair Department too. They know something that you don't.

Okay - the Sony connection first. Great cameras that they are, Sony mirror-less digital camera bodies have the same basic problem that all other cameras with removable lenses - dust and particles will eventually get into them and onto the sensor. Be you ever so careful or ever so obsessed, the dust will eventually beat you. And as all digital camera owners will discover, you need a sensor clean.

Up till now, there have been any number of sensor cleaning tips, kits, bits of equipment, and rituals devised for cleaning sensors - some of them have worked, most of them have not. Some have ruined sensors. This is particularly noticeable for people who have tried to do it as a home-job.

Sony mirror-less sensors have been a particular problem. I was alerted to this by one of the scientists in the CE Repair Department who was able to show me any number of anguished posts on the internet forums about it - and equally anguished emails passing back and forth amongst professional repair firms in other parts of the world. Many professional people seem to have spent a lot of time trying to clean Sony sensors and ended up with them just as dirty as before.

Well the two scientists in the CE Repair Department conducted a series of practical experiments to solve this and have devised a procedure that DOES clean the Sony mirror-less sensor completely - and can do it easily in the future. I was not initiated fully in the arcane ritual of it...being frightened of the bubbling vats and whirring flywheels - but that does not stop me from reporting their success. They are not going to release the secret - they are going to keep it as a working procedure for the Repair Department at the normal commercial price. It will be known as The Secret. It is a multi-stage process.

Note: The Secret does not involve those little rubber pads on the end of sticks that some people think are marvellous. They look like an invitation to disaster. About like poking your sensor with a wet Gummy Bear...

I can also confidently rule out steel wool pads or a wood chisel.

SO....take a look at the images that your Sony mirror-less camera has been pumping out recently. If there are little grey balloons in the sky, you need The Secret. Bring the camera in to Camera Electronic Repair Department next week and they will make those balloons go away. If the grey balloons have replaced the faces of your brides, grooms, newborns, or family members, bring it in NOW!

Mooching Along Through The Shop...

On a recent visit to the new CE Murray Street shop I came past this cabinet.

It is not overstated, nor over-full. Well, not as yet. It's still early days at the new shop and there will be more materièl added as time goes on. Our regular customers at the Stirling Street shop may crack a wry smile at this. Camera Electronic does have a habit of adding extra stuff from time to time...Ahem...

Okay, the cabinet has a " Pre-Owned " sign on the top. Those are pre-owned cameras and lense on the shelves. That's the bare bones of it. Here's the back story...

Camera Electronic has always maintained a Secondhand dealer's license. It has always had the legal ability to trade goods in or buy them outright and then to resell them. It also has the ability to thoroughly check the goods that come into the pre-owned section and to warrant their proper operation. This is due to the astute judgment of our technicians.

Our chief man, Ernest, uses nearly all of his senses when it comes to assessing equipment offered for trade.

a. He feels the camera. Is the surface rough, is a covering loose, do the controls feel gritty? Is there too much play in a lens mount? Does something not turn? All these signs mean that he will recommend that it not be traded in.

b. He listens to the camera. Do  the gears grate, does the motor whine too much, is there a crackle in the operation of the buttons or the levers? Again, this is a no...

c. He smells the camera. Mould and fungus have a peculiar odour. One he does not want us have to deal with. It can be dealt with, but not easily nor cheaply. Again no.

d. He looks at the camera. If it looks fine, that is fine. If it looks bad, that is not. Are there tell-tale signs of previous repair? Hmmm...

e. At this stage of the game I can state that I have never seen him lick a camera or lens to test the flavour. It is not impossible, but I have no idea that test result this would yield. About the only thing I can think of is the idea that a Zorki or Fed would probably taste like fish oil...Let's leave that one alone...

All the above is to indicate that the items that make it to the Pre-owned cabinet s at Stirling Street or Murray Street do so on merit. They have passed a set of very tough tests and are worthy of consideration. The fact that they are often at a considerable reduction in price compared to the new boxed item is of real benefit - you can have double the amount of equipment and double the amount of capability for the same price.

Do I practice what I preach? I do - I have bought secondhand lenses and camera bodies from Camera Electronic for decades and I have not been disappointed once. All the way from the wooden 4x5 Nagaoka that Ron sold me in 1995 to the latest 35mm f:1.4 Fujinon lens that sits on my Fujifilm X-Pro1 right now, the goods have been good and I have had fabulous value for money.

Go-on - mooch past that cabinet every time you are in there - and look in every time you do. The stock changes all the time and you never can tell when the ideal bit that you never dreamed you could afford will be sitting there waiting for you. One thing you can be sure of - it has the Ernest seal of approval.

Does that 35mm f:1.4 Fujinon do the business? It sure does when La Belle Jane is the model...

Sikorski Never Had It So Good - The New CE Drone Cabinet

Look up. What's that flying by? A bird? A plane? A man dressed in red and blue tights?

No, it's a DJI drone with a camera mounted on it. Someone is making an epic movie and they've decided to incorporate aerial views as well as the ground-based ones. They've gone further than the old trick of mounting a camera on a long boom - or of hanging out off a nearby building's roof. They've got the spectacle of the flying camera.

Well, so has Camera Electronic. We've had the gear in the Stirling Street shop all along and now we're featuring a dedicated drone cabinet in our new Murray Street shop - please see enclosed pictures.

 

And there's more - that's our own staff member Ricky calibrating the GPS system on a drone out the front of the shop. Don't panic - he's not flying combat missions from 230 Stirling Street. He hasn't attached the propellors or the ordnance to the machine in the picture. Yet. And you will be pleased to know that our Repairs Workshop is getting increased experience with drones as they come into commerical and artistic service in Western Australia.

The new Murray Street Shop - that's near the corner of Murray and Queen Street in the city - has the new cabinet. They've got extended trading hours that let you browse for new equipment later on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. This might be a good time to take stock of your photography and see if a fresh viewpoint - from the air - would boost your sales and fun.

Remember that Shoot Photography Workshops right next door to the 230 Stirling Street shop also run periodic courses and workshops that deal with drone and aerial photography as well as other aspects of videography. Ring to Shoot and see if there is a new world of fun awaiting.

See the DJI range on the Camera Electronic website
The new Camera Electronic city store is now open at 2/324 Murray St, Perth.
For opening hours click here

Just When You Thought It Was Safe...

Welcome to Ernest's World - the repair workshop at Camera Electronic. You will be amazed. You will be astounded. Try not to touch anything...

In particular, try not to touch the "Sony" charger that he has opened for repair on the workbench. We say "Sony" because that is what the white label on the top says, but there is no way in the world that this has ever been a Sony product.

Oh, it looks like it from the outside - there are the guide rails and the pins that accept a standard Sony lithium-ion battery, but when Ernest opened the casing the circuit board told a different story.

Look at the components - 1970's style resistors and capacitors. Look at the assembly of the parts on the board. They fit where they touch and they touch in very few places.

Look at the screw that holds the device together. If you think it looks like something that would normally secure an MDF cabinet, you could very well be right...

Ernest is not a man given to harsh judgements, but his verdict on this was "fire hazard".

Did this come from a reputable Sony dealer? I am betting it did not. It has the look and feel of eBay or a discount electrical shop. Someone was intrigued by the low price for it and either decided to sell it or buy it - when what they should have done is run out the door to avoid it.

Well, not for Camera Electronic. Our Sony IS Sony, and Sony are good. They stand by their equipment and by us...so if you are tempted to get that free shipping bargain from somewhere that need not be named, remember that you could well be getting the electrical surprise of your life.

A Beacon In The Darkness - B+W

Those of you who have lived in Darwin, New Guinea, Singapore, or Hong Kong will know what I mean when I say that humidity is not a friend to either your wardrobe or your camera equipment. It might be warm and romantic, but it grows fungus like crazy. You eventually end up taking pictures through the bottom of a petri dish...

We see it in lenses and camera bodies that have been in these climes - see it on the surfaces of lenses and smell it in the mustiness of the equipment. It is bad news, ruining the coatings on optical surfaces and rendering the lenses useless as far as definition or contrast. Getting rid of it once it has attacked the lenses is sometimes not possible - even if they can be cleaned the cost is considerable.

Well, what to do? Stay away from the naked tropics is one answer. So far it has worked for me -  my one trip to Singapore was spent in the dehumidified air conditioning of cocktail bars. I can thoroughly recommend the idea, but it played hell with the liver.

B+W, the German filter makers, have come up with a sober solution. They have put out a device called UV-Pro for Nikon, Canon, and Sony shooters who have DSLR or mirror-less cameras. It generates UV light that kills the fungus spores and prevents the development in the first place.

The component that does this is a special UV-LED. It is powered from a USB port and mounted in a detachable housing. The housing itself is held in a Nikon, Canon, or Sony adapter by magnets.

The adapter is darned clever - one end is for the lens mount and the other lets the adapter clip onto the camera body. Apparently fungus can also get onto the surfaces of glass associated with the sensors of the cameras - they need an occasional zapping as well.

It must be powerful medicine - there is a warning sign on the LED unit itself not to look directly at the light.

The price of the unit is well under the $ 200 mark and at that is a bargain for the tropical photographer. We might mention that Camera Electronic has supplied especial drying cabinets for this same problem - the Legend cabinets come in a large range of sizes and facilities - both these and the new B+W UV Pro should be worth their price in protection  - and for classic lenses they may be the only way to preserve them for the collector.

In-store now. Be sure to check out our on-line store as well for tis an other fine B+W filter products.

The Midnight Laboratory Of Dr. Ernest...

Approach the the old castle, open the creaking door, and avoid the large Tesla coil machine making lightning in the corner. Welcome to the laboratory of Dr. Ernest. It is as near to Transylvania as most of us ever get...

Disregard the shrieking. It is just the staff looking at the latest work roster. Pay them no mind. Look on the bench...

Notice the Canon camera sitting with the lens off, and strange wires leading from the inside...leading to the dismantled Voigtlander lens nose-down on the workbench. Now listen and watch as Dr. Ernest triggers the continuous exposure drive of the camera and captures the result in slow motion...

Notice how the actuator lever in the lens bounces back and forth as the diaphragm of the lens is stopped down - and how it comes to the end of its travel and meets as simple a device as a brass wire to arrest it...

See the shutter open in perfect synchronisation with the diaphragm, even though the camera is banging away like a maxim gun. And look into the mysterious depths of the camera at the living, breathing sensor...sensing things...

Notice how every paragraph ends with three dots...

Behold! Dr. Ernest breathes life into the separate parts! Behold! He knows how to make them operate in unison! Behold! He knows how to put them back together again and not end up with extra screws and springs! The science of the Repair Department! Life!

And one last thing...

Packing The Sheets - Or A Small Guide To Defeating The Courier Company

We send out lots of goods each week. We receive lots of goods each week. Some of these are cameras and lenses that need to be repaired and some of them have been repaired. The common factor that runs through all of this is making sure that the repairs and goods remain repaired and good. Here's some suggestions that may help.

The manufacturers of cameras and lenses have it pretty well taped down by now when it comes to packaging their gear for transport. They put a devil of a lot of work and precision into their products and they want those products to get to your hands in fine shape. By and large they succeed. Oh, we have still had large cardboard boxes arrive from wholesalers with rents in the outer surface and in an extremely small number of cases damage to the contents. Here again the packaging of the individual units nearly always saves the gear. Any disputes are settled smartly between the couriers, the wholesale houses, and our stock controller.

So -  that gets the camera to you in good shape. You take it out and use it and give it the normal wear and tear and then after a few years unfortunately have an accident that needs repair. You determine to send it to us. How do you do it?

Firstly you go back to the storage closet and get out the original camera box with all the funny cardboard and foam packaging. You saved it, right? Wise move, that, because a camera packed into that original sales box is as well protected as when you first got it. You can make it safe in the post or on a courier truck. Failing that you find a small sturdy box, lots of packing, and pack it tight.

Then you find a bigger box - one that will let you foam pad with plastic peanuts or strip foam or bubble wrap all around the camera box. The packaging materials are available at Officeworks or Clark Rubber. Write your name and address on a slip inside the camera box, seal it well with tape, and write your name and address - and the complaint you wish rectified - on another letter that you tape to the outside of the box.

Pad it well in all six sides when it goes into the outer cardboard container and make sure that the inner box is firmly wedged in the other one - don't give it a chance to bound about inside there like a wrecking ball.

Seal the outer box with stout packing tape and put your details - and ours - on the outside and head for the post office or courier office. PAY ENOUGH TO HAVE IT SENT QUICKLY AND SAFELY. DO NOT save a few dollars by having it back-loaded on a camel train from Broome. You will regret your parsimony.

When it arrives here we will cope with getting inside the boxes - we have the sort of air chisels and thermic lances that they use to get into capsized battleship hulls - and the techs can sort out whatever the problem is. We will pack it well for the return journey. Short of alien abduction, your camera should reach you in good condition.

Some Ernest Advice From The Workshop

I have been let into a few secrets by our senior technician regarding sensor cleaning for digital cameras. Here is a précis of the conversation held in the workshop. I have not included the bit about not scrubbing over the sensor with a steel wool Brillo pad as I figure nearly everyone will know that already. But here's some other thoughts:

Where do flies go in winter? If you have done pondering that, try this - where does sensor dust come from?

Okay, if you have removed the lens of your DSLR or mirror-less camera in the middle of a paddock at ploughing time or in the discharge path of a council mulcher, you may be forgiven for thinking that is the source of your troubles. Possibly, possibly. If you have not had such misfortune consider the other sources of contamination.

1. Lenses with open clearances and a considerable 'pumping 'action that operates upon zooming or focusing, dirt gets near moving section of lens, dirt gets drawn in, dirt gets distributed.

2. Your clean home is...full of cooking oil vapour as well as other sticky components. Also full of cloth lint and carpet fibres as well as dirt brought in from outside on you clothing. Run yourfinger over the top of a picture frame anywhere in the house. Pass inspection? If you think so, lick that finger. No? Thought so.

3. You get ready to change a lens and take the rear lens cap off the new one. You put it in your pocket, then change the lens, then recap the removed lens. With the cap that is now full of pocket lint. Guess where this goes and where it ends up next time you change. And ALL your rear lens caps are probably just as bad...

4. Way hay, let's go to the drag races. Or Barbagallo. Or the speedway. What is that drifting cloud of blue smoke composed of? Tyres. Guess which part of your camera it ends up on.

5. Spots in the viewfinder of your DSLR.? If they are not seen on Live View - and most times they are not - they are not affecting your sensor view or images.

6. On-board sensor cleaning mechanism not working? See No.2 above - you have glued the gunk to your sensor with just ordinary living. Time for a professional wet-solution clean to get off what a tiny piezo-shake will not shift. Not a home-swab-it-with-something-from-the-internet clean which is closer to the Brillo pad that you might think.

7. When I used to rip bones out of people's head for a living, I was required to do it with clean hands. The hospitals were surprisingly insistent upon this, and went to the extent of demanding that I wash not just to the wrist, but all the way up to the elbow for several minutes with strong soaps. Even though I rarely plunged my arm into the patients up to the elbow. The principle was to get cleanliness in a wide radius around where it was needed.

So also with cameras. No good just cleaning the sensor if the rest of the device looks like an ash-pit. And certainly no point in doing it if the back of the lens is a source of continued contamination. Clients - wise clients - would do well to bring their lenses in for cleaning and pay the extra impost to have the entire camera cleaned - it will extend the period of usability no end if the contamination loading is reduced all around.

And a final thought - but not from Ernest this time. I had been plagued with white spots on my images taken of dancers on a dark stage - particularly when flash illumination was used. Wide angle shots were the worst. I blamed the sensor and the curtains and the dancers and cruel fate...until I looked at the bits of dust that had accumulated on the inside of the UV filter that was screwed onto the 18-200mm lens. No wonder I had white spots - an 18mm lens firing at f:11 can see quite a lot close up to itself and if the dust has bright illumination against dark ground... so I removed the filter for inside shots and the spots disappeared.
Heading Image: Either sensor dust or flak..

http://cameraelectronic.com.au/repair.html

My Charger /Camera/Battery/Life Is Broken. Can I Buy Another?

Yes, of course you can. We sell cameras, chargers, batteries and lives as a matter of course. Indeed some of the lives in stock are as coarse as you can get. But you may be giving way to panic too soon*.

Our technical staff tells us that they have noticed people bringing in compact cameras that have had no use or exercise for six months or more and that are dead as a doornail - prompting the sad tale at the front counter. Certainly no response from the camera and the charger does not put any electricity into the battery. The user assumes the worst.

But once the camera is taken under the wing of the repair staff they test voltages and circuits and then try the procedure of applying a higher than normal voltage to the battery. If you were to use the term " kickstart " it would be as useful as anything. It's only a very small jolt for a small period of time but it helps to reverse the degradation of the battery and lets the charger recognise it and refill it at a slow trickle. There is still a couple of hours of charging needed but in this case you have a live battery again instead of a relic.

Note - The tech did not tell me the voltage or amperage so I cannot tell you. It's not exactly welding voltage but I would suggest that the readers do not try this one at home at all. Leave it to the trained professionals. If any one is going to fly backwards across the workshop emitting sparks and the smell of cooked fingers...let it be them.

Talk to Thomas at Repairs and see if Camera Electronic can help.

* We can tell you when to panic...

Heading Out East Of Eucla

"Well, I'm heading out east of Eucla in the car. Now it hasn't been serviced since I bought it four years ago and I'm gonna be all by myself out there but I'm sure nothing can possibly go wrong and my vacation will be perfect and I won't be disappointed at all. "

Yeah. Sure. Said no-one ever...

But every year happy hopefuls head overseas to spend vast amounts of money on seeing things that need to be photographed and can never be afforded again...and they take the camera and lenses that no technician has ever serviced - or even taken a look at. The camera and lenses that live in a bag in a closet in the dust for 364 days per year. The camera battery that gets charged every Presidential election...

And it's all gonna work perfectly...If these people were driving the TITANIC they would hit the HINDENBURG...while smoking a cigar.

Let's reset reality. If you keep the car serviced regularly there is a fair chance that it will work when you need it to work. Murphy's Law aside, you have actually got a better chance in a car that has seen a mechanic. It is no different with a camera. In photographic terms you do not want to be stuck on the side of the optical Eyre highway trying to thumb a lift from passing Japanese cyclists*.

Come into Camera Electronic. Book the camera and lenses in with Thomas and let Ernest and Daniel ensure that they will work when you want them to work. Pay the service cost. Do it before the Christmas holiday period separates you and them. They'll be on their holidays with cameras that take pictures - if you are wise, you will too.

* They are out there. Unless they have been eaten by the French cyclists...

Does This Lens Feel Funny To You?

Well, no. Or yes, if that would be better...I'm not quite sure how funny lenses ever are...

You bought it online from Lenses R Us in Fortitude Valley but apparently they don't appear on the web browser anymore? Sort of a stealth camera shop, I presume...Well, the humour of the lens is starting to appear, now that you come to think of it...

Don't be too concerned if the lens makes a noise as it works. A lot of lenses do that - they have electronic motors inside to do the autofocusing and these can be audible. Indeed, some manufacturers have realised that the noise can interfere with the use of the camera for video work and have made re-designs that incorporate silent motors. The still photographer may not notice this but the videographer can breath a ( silent ) sigh of relief.

And some lenses have mechanisms inside to reduce the effects of vibration - you'll see they have the words VR, OS, IS, or  VC in the name somewhere - not at the same time, as these are different makers. Well, some of those mechanisms can have a rattle to them when they are not being used - indeed some of them make a little clack noise as they work,

Some lenses have a degree of what one could only describe as looseness in their zooming elements and can seem to slop around when not under direct control. One manufacturer realises that people want to have different feels and has a friction collar that snubs the zoom ring - this is a very good idea. Other manufacturers just rely on tight tolerances at the start of the lens' life and loose ones later...

But if you have one of the Special Lenses From The Internet ( and they need not be from Queensland - you can get them from Hong Kong and Oklahoma as well...) that has passed what we like to call Negative Quality Control, you may have Special Noises. Or Special Feelings. Sometimes you can look into them and see Special Things.

Our service department can investigate this for you - it might cost a bit to do this as it takes time, tools, and occasionally a bucket of bleach. Keep trying to get Fortitude Valley on the phone and remember to keep your sense of humour.

PS: If the paper you got from Fortitude Valley says Warrenty it means your lens will be fixed by Warren...

Learning The Hard Way - With Hoodman Hoodskins

Being old enough to know better doesn't help. Being rich, or pretty, or powerful doesn't help. Being witty doesn't even help...when physics, geometry, and circumstance combine, you are going to go for a tumble.

This was the case recently for one of our staff members who qualifies on all the above criteria. He was on holiday near Bluff Knoll and had taken his Leica camera for landscape shots. Pausing to admire the scenery, he set the camera down on the solid rock behind him.

Bad move - the camera was obviously a renegade as it made an immediate bolt for freedom - starting to slip away down a crevasse between two rocks. The unnamed staff member reached around in a flash and just caught it as it went - getting it just by the metal lens hood.

After he had calmed down, wiped off the cold sweat, stopped screaming, and could see again, he inspected the runaway. The pictures show where the rock face had scraped away at it - you can see the big old scratches down the LCD screen and two small chunks off the  metal surround. What Fate did not know on the day was that the camera screen was protected with a Hoodman Hoodskin screen protector.

These things are held in place by the static attraction - they come in a packet of two for under $ 16 and you cut them to fit whatever screen you have.

The happy ending to this story is: when the Hoodskin was peeled off the Leica LCD screen was completely undamaged. That is disaster averted for $ 8. If they had Hoodskins on the HINDENBURG history would have been different.

Shut Dat Shutter

If you have a mirrorless camera - like the Fujifilm X-E2, The Olympus E-P5, or the Panasonic GX-7, you can conduct an interesting experiment.

Set the camera so that it will fire the shutter with the lens off. Put it to manual, and the shutter speed to 1/60 of a second. Take the lens off, and look into the open mount as you press the shutter button.

What the heck was that!? It was the shutter snapping into place, opening for 1/60 of a second, then snapping shut again, then opening up. If you had put a cigar end in there you could have cut it off...No, no, no - that was just a joke. Don't do that. Smoking cigars is bad for you and even worse for shutters.

The point of this exercise is to show you where the shutter is. It used to be tucked away decently a the back of the camera body just in front of the film plane* or hiding coyly behind a swinging mirror - now it is up the front ready to be broken.

Reduce the chances of this - now you've done the experiment, don't repeat it. If you are going to clean your own sensor ( Questionable decision ) don't leave the camera on ( Bad decision) and then press the shutter button ( Terrible decision ). Repairs are profitable but only for the repair shop - not for you.

If you are concerned about dust or smudges on your sensor past what the little cleaning program of your camera can cope with, bring it in to our repairs department. We can do it well, quickly, and without busting the shutter.

* Was a PRU Spitfire considered a film plane...?

Infra-Red In Ernest

Following on last week's posts about infra-red, Ernest has pointed out the advantage of his conversion techniques for older digital cameras - designed to make the things record IR with no need for a dark filter on the front of the lens.

For a still subject, not too much difference but for a moving one...the difference between getting the shot sharp or as a complete fuzzy blur. You can use the normal aperture controls on your lens.

Of course you are sort of making a long-term IR commitment with the camera conversion and you will get a monochrome image. You can get wild colours if you put them into the file afterwards.

Call the repair department and discuss the technical details and costs with the boys.

Cabinet Electronics

The shop is currently refitting. Unlike a warship, this is not being done in a dry dock - it is being done in a kamikaze attack. Thus you may experience a little delay in getting a response to a phone call or an email enquiry. At least until we throw the burning aircraft off the flight deck...

Please bear with us. It will get better. From the looks of the new cabinets that have already arrived ( and more coming ) it will get very much better. But just this week there will be a bit of confusion and language. The repair and rental departments are largely unaffected.

On the bright side, at least we have got rid of the rats.

Spot The Difference

Professionals please pass further down the car. Amateurs and enthusiasts and first-time point and shooters please take note.

When you bring your camera in for cleaning, there can be several levels of cleaning needed - you might be able to recognise which ones you need by looking into the viewfinder and at the images on your computer screen.

1. If you have black spots and hairs and insect legs showing up when you look through the viewfinder they are most likely to be on the focusing screen inside the head of he camera. If they do not show up on " live view " at the back screen you can be sure they are up in the head. Here's hoping they are not too far into the pentaprism or porroprism as this needs dismantling to get to.

2. If you see vague grey-ish balloons on your images as they come up in the computer - and they are always at the same spot in each image - these are dust motes on your sensor. Needs professional cleaning here at the workshop. If the spots are not just grey balloons but have a definite shape they might be actual dirt fragments on the sensor. If they look like KFC spoons or rifle bullets you are well overdue for a clean.

3. If the rest of the camera looks like a pig's opinion, you need to consider having it cleaned before they open up to clean the inside. This means lenses as well as the outer body. If they get to the point up in the workshop where they are hosing out the card slot with a Kärcher you might consider giving the motocross a miss for the rest of the season.

Not to make too coarse a point of it, if you carry your gear in a filthy old camera bag that is leftover from the 70's, you can expect to do a lot of cleaning. Invest in a new one, and look for one that can be kept clean itself. The KATA range are lovely bright yellow inside and this shows up any dirt that falls in. They are spongeable so you can keep ahead of the game.

The Naked Leica - With Earnest

Oh, I can hear the whirring of the search engines with that title - but read on and you will be rewarded.

Or Chief Service Technician, Earnest, has shown me a frightening sight. He disassembled a III-series Leica camera at the request of a client and tackled the task of completely rebuilding the heart of the camera - the shutter mechanism. It is work worthy of a surgeon.

Leica cameras have focal-plane shutters and in the days when the III series were current, those shutters were made with cloth curtains. This was a specially rubberized material attached to the drums and springs of the mechanism with cloth tapes. You could look at the parts and distinguish fine stitches as well as well as glue that kept it together. Not surprisingly, time has taken its toll of these shutters and the one presented to Earnest had long-since ceased to be workable.

Aha. But Earnest has some stock of the original material and access to some of the tapes - and he has an intimate knowledge of the cameras as well. Thus he was able to tackle the task of disassembly and re-manufacture of the cloth curtains. See the attached images.

The business is slow, as the tapes have to be glued to the drum and this means that he has to wait for the drying before the next stage, but as it slowly goes back together one of the classic Leicas comes back to real working life.

This is good news for the owner, who had been discouraged in other repair shops, and good news for  people who might be facing similar restoration work. Take heart - Camera Electronics and Earnest are on your side and can help!

One from Column A and one from Column B

“ Whaddaya want? ”

This would be a terrible way to greet a customer over the phone or over our sales counter....but it might be a very good idea when we take cameras in for service – particularly when we take them in for cleaning.

Cleaning a camera can be a number of things, and unless our repair department and the customer come to a clear understanding of how much cleaning is needed and expected....well there can be anxiety on both sides.

If your images show odd-shaped spots that appear regularly in each frame – you have a dirty sensor. This is most common in DSLR's, though it can be seen in some isolated cases in compact cameras. You need a sensor clean.

If your camera and lenses are covered in dust, dirt, oily residues, bits of toffee papers, dead insects, etc. They need a clean in addition to that applied to the sensor.

If the gunge that you have encountered has permeated so far into the camera that it appears up above the focusing screen even after the external cleaning has been done, you need to have the thing disassembled for a further separate cleaning.

Sadly, in some cases the camera can be so full of muck as to render any efforts only partially successful – no joke – if you are in all-pervading dust it can ruin your camera.

So, make sure the staff know what you really want as far as a level of cleaning – if you just opt for a sensor clean but the rest of the poor old camera is full of more dust, you will be back in a week. You may need to spend a great deal more on maintenance.