the Insta' Jam Troubleshooting - Modding an Ilford Sportsman C Instant

I wanted to know why my Ilford Sportsman C Instant jammed. I still don't know, but now it works.

Problem

As you can see I applied a dramatic modification to my camera. It's a very simple camera that takes instamatic film cassettes and it displayed a phenomenon that I'd encountered in one of the few other instamatic cameras that I'd tried: The winder lever jammed and/or the spool-winder (for the film cassette) didn't engage with the cassette properly for film to be wound.

So I did what any sane person... wouldn't do. I removed the top cover to see if I could discover what caused the jamming. After some time I saw a lever that engaged with a cogwheel that stopped it from turning. When I pushed the lever to the side it stuck in another position with a click. Then I could wind the lever and push the exposure button. After which the lever return to engage the cogwheel.

Hmm... How this happened and why it couldn't be undone from just using the camera with a cassette loaded I still couldn't figure out. But "cameras need excercise" is my motto. The camera needed some help to expose photos again. Hence I made the intervention pictured:

Tie a string to the engaging lever to be manually pulled every time I want to wind the film on.

In a later post you will get to see the photos from the roll I exposed with the camera.

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Comments

Chaika Leica

Well, here's a Chaika 2M that I bought from Alex Helios via Instagram. It's a great full manual viewfinder half-frame camera. The wheel on the top is for shutter time selection, from B to 1/30th to 1/250th of a second. The square button on the front right of the camera is the release/exposure. The lens mounted on the camera in the picture is not the original Industar-69. The Chaika is a rare model compact camera since the prime lens is detachable. What is more is that it has M39 screw mount. But - like with the Paxette M39 system - you can't get focus with a lens from another M39 system. Unless you adapt the lens or - in this case - the camera (mount)! The Chaika mount is easily detached from the body by loosening four screws. If I want to mount the Leica thread mount M39 (LTM) lenses on the Chaika - which is my goal with this mod - I have to add 1.3mm to the mount. That is what is needed to change the camera's flange focal distance (FFD) from Chaika system to L

A busy photographer

This photographer is now an owner of a house with all that entails. That is my focus since October and will be for some time.

Lomo-Modd-Orama

A Lomo Smena 8 camera with a faulty shutter. An Olympus Pen F camera. Part of a microscope adapter for the Pen. That's what I started out with. 45 minutes later I had a new lens! Mount The mount came off a microscope adapter. I got the adapter from my first (of two) attempts to buy an Olympus Pen F. There seem to be some unscrupolous ebay sellers around peddling useless Pens with microscope adapted prisms. Luckily - in hindsight - I got a microscope adapter with this first Pen. Which I now trashed when a Lomo Smena 8 without a future landed on my doorstep (figuratively speaking). Conversion / Havoc Smena I only knew the camera as a half-frame camera [Correction - it's a full frame camera!] called Smena 8 and hadn't thought to place it in Lomography-land until I read the name Lomo on the lens when it was already modded. Unwittingly I had tread the tiles of lomo-dom twice in as many weeks, also having put two rolls through a Praktica CX-1 which appears to be Gr

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