I bought bunch of old cameras for peanuts. I was not really sure why at the time. Let's say they are backup of my current cameras, if/when they brake. Also I wanted a camera for summer, to fit in my shorts pocket. My Konica C35 doesn't fit that description - it fits in the jacket pocket fine, but for short or pants it is too big and too heavy.
So one of bought cameras is Olympus XA1, the simplest and cheapest of XAs. Actually two, but one of them has serious fog in the viewfinder, I tried to clean it but the fog is in the material. Not sure it is possible to remove. So that one is for spare parts I guess.
I bought bunch of other stuff, but now I want to talk mainly about Konica C35 clones, that I got two of - Cosina 35 Compact E and GAF Memo 35 ET - and how am I having fun fixing them (hopefully).
I have only deep respect for people that can fix old cameras. Mechanisms seems crazy complicated to me - many parts moving in perfect cooperation. The patience, skill, and steady hands that goes in this job - like some camera surgeon that brings sad dead cameras back to happy serving life again! Amazing. So I guess i wanted cosplay camera technician for myself a little bit.
So far I have not take any test shots with any of these cameras. Cosina seems to underexpos a bit, which is fine - setting a little lower ISO than actual film is is all that is needed. It has little haze and fungus here and there, which I don't mind. I tried to clean a viewfinder just a bit and it was quite fun and simple and it helped - view through is suprisingly clean and crisp. It also seems a tiny bit lighter and less quality build than Konica. Looks like the body is some aluminium alloy. At a first glance I dont like its flush square shutter button, but might it be practical, time will tell. Overall - looks like perfectly usable camera. For ten bucks.
Gaf Memo is heaviest and biggest of the bunch. Still approximately same. I changed light seals on this camera - my first time. I don't think I did very good job but hey. Cameras shutter appeared sticky - shutter blades were slow to return to closed state after shutter fired. I saw few videos about how to clean sticky shutter blades before I stumled upon forum thread where this issue was fixed by a drop of oil on the "fly wheel". Having no idea what that is I opened bottom side of camera, which was long tedious process because of totally stripped screw, and cleaned dry all cogweels and other parts that could be cleaned without dissasemling mechanism. I don't believe I could assemble it back again.
And it acutally helped! Shutter blades are perfectly fine it seems. Good to know and good to have scenario - much simpler than dissasembling whole front lens and cleaning the blades.
For now - Gaf Memo seems to work fine. Another ten bucks. For Konica C35 basically. When I see prices these Konicas goes for sometimes and prices of these clones I just have to shake my head.
So, next stage is to actually test some film in the cameras and if it goes well, I will have two backup cameras for my Konica and one camera for shorts pocket for summer. Happy days!