The Project

So, the question is, why is an amateur photographer posting his photos onto the internet for all to see. The Answer?.. Because I want to.

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It all started in early 2018 when I saved a Praktica MTL5B from the rubbish tip. This camera was not only dirty, rusted and covered in nicotine it was also untested but ,as I love old stuff, I decided against my better judgement to keep it. I say better judgement because it was a royal pain to get sorted.

 

The body was the first challenge as it was rusty and covered in nicotine and i was against buying another unit for parts. I cleaned and cleaned until the camera was somewhat silver but then I realised that my scrubbing had removed part of the logo so.. I stopped.

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The second part was the actual mechanism, it was sticky and that meant the shutter speeds where inaccurate however this was resolved by disassembling the body and cleaning all the parts before reassembling the camera.

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After all this, I had one working camera and the result of my excursions with it is on this web page although the prints look damn better than the scans.