Ensign Special Reflex
How to restore a
Serious damaged camera.
This Ensign
camera did not survive a house-party somewhere in Canada.
After this disaster the owner was looking for someone to
repair the wrack and came to my site.
He sent me some photos and was more or less convinced that his
question in fact was superfluous.
The whole camera house was completely crooked. It was just a bunch of wood and
leatherette almost pressed together.
This happened some twelve years ago and at that time I did not
had the experience I do have now.
My answer was that I wasn't able to refurbish the camera and
wished him good luck.
Some weeks later the postman delivered a package from Canada
and surprisingly it contained the crooked camera.
The sender wished me a lot of fun with the remnants and
suggested to use them for repair or what else.
I dropped the camera or what was left of it is a shoebox and
forgot about it.
Now some month ago I found the shoe box and put it on the
shelf so that it should not escape my intension again.
Now I wondered how to start this project and how to tackle the
damage of the wooden camera house.
As I said before I do have a lot more experience now. I
learned a lot in the past ten years and each bad looking
camera nowadays is a challenge for me to repair.
However this is definitely the worst I ever have seen before.
My only hope was that almost every part of the camera was in
the box.
As far as I could see that seemed the fact except the wooden
part of the back above the film frame.
To find out if the camera's most essential part - the
focal plane shutter- could be restored, I connected both sides
of the camera together
using a wooden lath from a cigar box and started to reinstall
the focal plane shutter or what was left of it.
This is only possible if the camera has been straitened in its
original shape.
The focal plane shutter should be able to move freely inside
the housing straight in front of the film-frame on the
backside.
Working on this I found a metal frame inside the housing
serving as a mirror house for the reflex mirror and its second
function was obvious a sort of light baffle.
The Ensign Special Reflex Camera housing after disassembling the mirror case and the two blinds and three rollers.
On the left the wooden housing lacking the wooden top connection. On the right the mirror case.
The wooden lath is a temporary
solution to hold the camera together.
Only then it is possible to remount the rollers and the focal
plane shutter mechanism.
This set up is necessary to find out if the focal plane
shutter works as it should.
If this would work out positive then we have to find a way to
repair the wooden camera house. First thing first.
The photo above shows three
rollers, the friction plate and two blinds. The left roller
A is the winding roller attached is blind #1. In de middle you
can see the friction plate and the second from right is the
middle roller B with the blind #2 attached.
The right roller is the lower roller C with attached both
straps. Both right rollers are tensioned spring loaded.
The three drawings below show the
working of this type of shutter.
The lower blind is connected by friction to the straps of the
upper blind one.
These straps on their turn are connected to the roller C. The
slit width is created by winding the upper roller further once
the lower blind has reached its end.
The straps pull blind 1through the friction plate on roller A
thus creating the slit between blind 1 and blind 2.
When releasing the shutter, the lower blind 2 is pulled down
by the tension of roller C, followed by the slit and then
the upper blind follows the slit and closes the film frame
again.
The exposure has been finished. Blind 1 and 2 are connected
again by the friction plate and the focal plane shutter is
ready for the next session.
The focal plane shutter winding
assembly after exposure. A= Winding wheel. B is
intermediate level. C is release level coupled to the release
knob and D is the release pawl holding the winding wheel.
f stops the exposure time when Instant mode is selected. e stops the exposure when Time is selected.
