nerwin
Been spending a lot of time on here!
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2015
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- Vermont
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This is one of the other cameras I got in the lot from a friend of mine, this is the Fujica AX-1, released in 1980 - A camera I haven't heard about but read that its a bit unreliable. This one I was told that it has a sticky shutter, but I haven't experienced that. I believe what the previous meant is that the shutter sticks sometimes and that's because the battery dies. It requires the battery to fire the shutter since its electro-magnetic. I have fired it over 100 plus times now and it's working just fine.
It's an interesting camera, it does feel cheap but its quite small and pretty light too. No manual controls besides bulb mode and flash sync mode which is 1/60th other than that its aperture priority only. I do like they added exposure compensation on the ISO dial, I guess that's one way of having some control over your exposure with this camera. The self timer is electronic and that works well, it still beeps!
It's in pretty good condition, little dirty.
But its not a BAD looking film camera.
The seals have become quite delicate and oily. They needed to be replaced for sure!
The film window on the door appears to have mold on it
So I bought new seals for the camera. Surprised someone still makes them! These are for the AX-3 but still fit the AX-1 just fine.
I got everything laid out only to make a mess soon.
Well that was fun, that stuff is nasty. But I got it all cleaned out! It was a chore that is for sure. But I couldn't use the camera like this knowing this stuff is falling everywhere! I even removed the focus screen and cleaned that and the bottom of the prism, it definitely made the viewfinder look better. But that was not fun trying to get that focus screen back in without damaging it.
That looks much better! I know these cameras have issues with light leaks around the film window. So I decided to cover it up with these neat stickers called light dims and they cover just about 100 percent of the light. I use them to make bright LED's in my home theater less annoying. If it helps blocking some stray light coming in from the window, why not give it a try? I never look at these windows anyways, even though they can be helpful, I rather have a rather less light leaks on the film.
That looks much cleaner now. The viewfinder is really small on this camera but the image you see inside is quite large actually.
I noticed there was some stuff inside the viewfinder, so I took the top cover off to attempt to clean whatever it was, but unfortunately its on the prism at a location that I would need to fully disassemble to remove and clean. Just wasn't worth it to me. It doesn't affect the images anyway and you can still clearly focus. I cleaned what I could and reassembled the top cover. Checked to make sure everything was working correctly and sure enough, it was.
I shined up the fake leatherette as well, it dries and you can't feel the oily nature of this stuff I use but darkens the black plastic bits of the camera, brings them back to life and hydrates them and not only that it also gives it UV protection as well. This stuff lasts fo a really long time, at least on camera bodies.
It cleaned up well!
Well that just my little journey into restoring this camera and getting it ready to shoot again. I am quite aware of the capacitor problems these have, its not if, its when. The capacitors seem to go bad in these at some point but maybe I got lucky and its just fine!
Last thing there is do is to load some film in it and go shoot it! I tested the meter is appears to be accurate, within 1 stop anyways and I am happy with that.
It's an interesting camera, it does feel cheap but its quite small and pretty light too. No manual controls besides bulb mode and flash sync mode which is 1/60th other than that its aperture priority only. I do like they added exposure compensation on the ISO dial, I guess that's one way of having some control over your exposure with this camera. The self timer is electronic and that works well, it still beeps!
It's in pretty good condition, little dirty.
But its not a BAD looking film camera.
The seals have become quite delicate and oily. They needed to be replaced for sure!
The film window on the door appears to have mold on it
So I bought new seals for the camera. Surprised someone still makes them! These are for the AX-3 but still fit the AX-1 just fine.
I got everything laid out only to make a mess soon.
Well that was fun, that stuff is nasty. But I got it all cleaned out! It was a chore that is for sure. But I couldn't use the camera like this knowing this stuff is falling everywhere! I even removed the focus screen and cleaned that and the bottom of the prism, it definitely made the viewfinder look better. But that was not fun trying to get that focus screen back in without damaging it.
That looks much better! I know these cameras have issues with light leaks around the film window. So I decided to cover it up with these neat stickers called light dims and they cover just about 100 percent of the light. I use them to make bright LED's in my home theater less annoying. If it helps blocking some stray light coming in from the window, why not give it a try? I never look at these windows anyways, even though they can be helpful, I rather have a rather less light leaks on the film.
That looks much cleaner now. The viewfinder is really small on this camera but the image you see inside is quite large actually.
I noticed there was some stuff inside the viewfinder, so I took the top cover off to attempt to clean whatever it was, but unfortunately its on the prism at a location that I would need to fully disassemble to remove and clean. Just wasn't worth it to me. It doesn't affect the images anyway and you can still clearly focus. I cleaned what I could and reassembled the top cover. Checked to make sure everything was working correctly and sure enough, it was.
I shined up the fake leatherette as well, it dries and you can't feel the oily nature of this stuff I use but darkens the black plastic bits of the camera, brings them back to life and hydrates them and not only that it also gives it UV protection as well. This stuff lasts fo a really long time, at least on camera bodies.
It cleaned up well!
Well that just my little journey into restoring this camera and getting it ready to shoot again. I am quite aware of the capacitor problems these have, its not if, its when. The capacitors seem to go bad in these at some point but maybe I got lucky and its just fine!
Last thing there is do is to load some film in it and go shoot it! I tested the meter is appears to be accurate, within 1 stop anyways and I am happy with that.
![[No title]](/data/xfmg/thumbnail/37/37090-2836dacbe52360ec3fdc1246a4e1d045.jpg?1734169826)
![[No title]](/data/xfmg/thumbnail/30/30989-2ed4e52fa80fcd0ba553c515ffc589cd.jpg?1734159049)
![[No title]](/data/xfmg/thumbnail/30/30988-aef3845b94a67d6dcce6e4e59d5d66c3.jpg?1734159046)
