Broken film winder on old SLR

[JenniferK]

Hi all,

I hope you can help me. A good friend of mine owns an old camera, a Chinon CE-5, and the film winder has broken. We don't really know how it happened, the thing just won't go back on... I think a piece could be missing, I'm not sure.

I've phoned some camera repair shops and a lot of them were quite reluctant to help me; I remember one saying it wasn't economical to fix it. But my friend is really fond of this camera... so does anyone know somewhere in London where I could get this fixed? Or where I could find another part that I could put on myself?

I've included some pics of what it looks like below. Thanks in advance.

 

[Nod]

The bad news is that it's almost certainly not worth repairing.

The good news is that it'll probably be a Pentax lens mount - if the lenses screw on it'll be a 42mm mount, if it's a bayonet fitting it'll most likely be a Pentax K mount. Bodies with either mount are cheaply available from places like Mifsuds or Ffordes. The lenses (if PK mount) will also fit and work on Pentax DSLRs to some extent of automation - IIRC, just in Aperture Priority mode (and full manual!).

If your friend is REALLY attached to the camera, they might find one identical on e-bay and could cannibalise it for any spares to repair the broken one. Good luck! (An e-bay one SHOULD be dirt cheap but you never know!

 

[j37r]

If you turn the rewind collar upside down, chances are that there is a threaded portion in the centre. If so, then the stem it attaches to has dropped down into the film chamber on the camera. You need to push it back up to reattach it to the collar, but you may not be able to open the camera back because the collar is also the back release mechanism on many cameras.
Try turning the camera upside down,tapping the base to see if the stem will reappear, even if it is only a millimetre or so, you could then grip it with tweezers long enough to spin the collar back onto the thread, then open the back of the camera, grab hold of the lower end that fits onto the top of the film cannister and tighten the collar fully.