In mid-2022, I was generously gifted a very special camera by a friend: a Goerz Minicord, reportedly the smallest twin-lens reflex (TLR) ever made, and one of the smallest truly serious film cameras ever made for that matter. My friend had inherited the camera, I believe, but had never shot film in it. I have very few “shelf queen” cameras — those that sit on a shelf and either don’t function, or for which film can no longer be purchased. If I own a camera, I want it to work, and I want to have used it at some point or another. As a result, my first objective was to figure-out how to get film into the Minicord and give it a go. Now that I’ve figured it out, it seems useful to share what I found.
Continue reading…November 2022
This TLR Took a Face Plant (Or, What Not to Do with Your Camera)
Since well before the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been learning (slowly and carefully) how to repair and restore certain types of film cameras. As time has gone on, I’ve tackled increasingly bigger challenges, and one of them recently was resurrecting a Yashica-D twin-lens reflex (TLR) camera that its previous owner apparently dropped, face down. What follows is a narrative on bringing that camera back — with a subtext for all of us on how not to handle your cameras, since drops onto hard surfaces are not generally reparable. And when they are, as I discovered, it can be quite challenging.
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