Where do you get your rangefinder serviced?

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Cistron

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Mike
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Hi folks,

I managed to score a Minolta CLE with a full lens setup. It looks and sounds fairly alright and I will yet have to put my first roll of film through it before I know for sure. However, I could use a recommendation as to where to get it serviced (shutter and rangefinder calibration, lubrication, clean) in London.

Cheers,
Mike
 
If it absolutely must be in London, sendean cameras are well known - although their services don't come cheap. They have their main store (and repair area) in Farringdon, although I believe they have a second shop in the West End as well.

Miles Whitehead is often recommended on these fora for good reasons, he performs CLAs at very reasonable prices, but he is based a bit further out from London so you'd have to send it to him. Even with RMSD or First Class Recorded both ways, it still often works out cheaper than most other repairers. The only thing is I don't know if he does rangefinder servicing, but drop him an email and ask.
 
I don't know if they service CLEs but RG Lewis did a great job on my M4. They are quite expensive though.
 
FruitFlakes said:
I don't know if they service CLEs but RG Lewis did a great job on my M4. They are quite expensive though.
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Would you mind telling me what you paid and what was done? I've briefly looked at the Sendean prices and they are quite a bit more than I expected. Oh the joy of Leica elitism, haha.
 
Yeah, they aren't cheap. My MX was about ~£40-45 including post to Miles Whitehead for a CLA, compared to £119 for Sendean. I believe Newton Ellis in Liverpool is often also recommended - London repair prices tend to be incredibly inflated (the cost of the cameras in Sendean were also absolutely extortionate, I didn't know you could add extra digits to the cost of some really rather budget cameras, but all used camera stores in London share that trait).
 
£180 (inc. vat), which included cleaning a foggy VF, calibrating the rangefinder, lubricating the rewind knob, calibrating the shutter and cleaning everything else. I think Red Dot Cameras do CLAs for £140 as well.
 
If it's as you say looking fairly OK and sounds right, why not get some rolls of film through it and try it first?

I'm one of these people who adheres by the if it ain't broke don't fix it rule!

I work on cars a lot and I know to my cost that fiddling with something that works perfectly well is a recipe for disaster!
 
pepper said:
If it's as you say looking fairly OK and sounds right, why not get some rolls of film through it and try it first?

I'm one of these people who adheres by the if it ain't broke don't fix it rule!

I work on cars a lot and I know to my cost that fiddling with something that works perfectly well is a recipe for disaster!
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Doing it right now, as I wrote in my opening post :)
 
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