Mamiya 7II: Cracked Curtain Opening Knob and Rangefinder Fix
Originally posted on Instagram. Notes from the repair bench, kept here as a searchable archive. View the original on Instagram
Servicing a Mamiya 7II with a few issues. The most obvious is that the rangefinder was off by quite a bit. Also, the first photo shows the curtain opening knob and if you look carefully you can see the knob is cracked where the handle pins go through the knob. While the knob was still working, it was a matter of time before it would all crumble apart. Solution was to replace the knob, handle and spring as shown in photo two.
Quick info on the Mamiya 7II curtain opening knob: the original Mamiya 7 had a one piece knob which holds up well. On the Mamiya 7II, the knob was changed to add a fold up lever. This makes opening and closing the curtain easier. But, there is now a risk of the lever and/or the knob cracking. Some Mamiya 7 models also have this improved knob if they were upgraded at some time in their life. If you have a Mamiya 7II, I recommend you treat this piece gently. Replacement parts supplies are drying up.
Also, I’d note that in the last photo, you can see that this camera came in with a HOYA ND filter on the front of the lens. I make it a point to check all filters for parallelism when they arrive on a lens. If the filter is out of specs, I do let the client know (I did a post on filter quality recently). In this case, the filter was around 3 degrees out of plane parallelism and while this may not seem like much, it might not be the best filter to use for very critical images.
