Mamiya 645 AF Series: Repair Fixtures and Why to Avoid Buying
Originally posted on Instagram. Notes from the repair bench, kept here as a searchable archive. View the original on Instagram
This post is about a Mamiya camera that I generally don’t recommend purchasing these days: the Mamiya 645 AF series. Great camera when it works but it has become a bit of an orphan for any sort of service as parts are very scarce so that is the risk. And, to make calibrations on the body, special fixtures and software are needed. While I have the hardware/software for service, my parts supply is about gone so I no longer service these models.
I am writing this post because during my spring cleaning I found my 645AF repair fixtures. The first photo shows the setup to read data from the camera and make adjustments to the shutter and meter. The 645AF was the first Mamiya to use software tools for repair/calibration. The photos show the Mamiya software installed on a 1990’s Japanese version IBM Thinkpad running in MS-DOS. By today’s standards a bit primitive. One of the photos shows the jigs needed to calibrate the body and lenses.
I think I will put all of this back in storage and maybe someday I will come across a large cache of new 645AF parts and can resume repairs of these cameras. I am not hopeful.
