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Camera repair materials increasingly hard to find
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 20, 2022 1:40 pm    Post subject: Camera repair materials increasingly hard to find Reply with quote
[rant]

Is it just me or are (good) camera repair materials & tools getting more and more difficult to find?

Micro-Tools are nowadays just a shadow of their former self as I remember them to be; a vastly reduced selection of tools, screws, greases etc.

JapanHobbyTools still trade, but availability of their products on Amazon is dwindling rapidly, and they seem to have shifted focus to camera accessories rather than repair tools & materials.

Amazon's "improved" search results means that you now get hundreds of completely irrelevant items to wade through. Most items are inadequately described so you really don't know if they are what you need. Mostly it is the exact same Chinese-produced item sold under a bazillion different brand names & supplier IDs.

eBay: see Amazon. And filtering on region apparently now means "specified region + China"

Relevant greases and solvents are increasingly difficult to get hold of, either because of import/export restrictions, marketing strategies, and health-and-safety regulations.

Independent camera repair shops have been slowly squeezed out of existence; it now seems the market for camera repair tools & materials is going the same way Sad

As new EU regulations force manufacturers to make spare parts available outside of their own repair channels, the generic tools and materials required to do those repairs now get stripped from the market Rolling Eyes

NOTE: Please don't misinterpret the above: I have nothing against Chinese products per se; their engineering, research & design capabilities have improved massively and they do have some of the best products available nowadays. Unfortunately the retail channels are also still filled with the tens/hundreds of thousands of products that are of nigh unusable quality and that just waste the world's resources Sad

[/rant]


PostPosted: Sun Feb 20, 2022 2:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Hey Mark, I couldn't agree with you more about the deplorable search routines at eBay and Amazon. The answer is to skim and hit the next page button as quickly as possible -- sadly.

But, just out of curiosity, I just now went over to US eBay and did a search on what I consider to be the two most important tools for camera and lens repair -- lens spanners and crosspoint screwdrivers. I got 324 hits for lens spanners and 204 hits for crosspoint screwdrivers. After paging through several dozen listings for each, I was heartened to find that there were at least a handful of listings for what appear to be decent tools. I also checked for lens grease and got 44 hits, so that was also heartening to see. Another tool I consider to be necessary with my fumble fingers is a good set of extra fine-point tweezers. Again, on eBay, I got hundreds of hits -- even when I toggled on "US Only" and I found at least a couple designs, made from stainless steel, I think would be perfecting suitable. So all is not lost yet -- and hopefully won't be for some time.


PostPosted: Sun Feb 20, 2022 4:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
cooltouch wrote:
Hey Mark, I couldn't agree with you more about the deplorable search routines at eBay and Amazon. The answer is to skim and hit the next page button as quickly as possible -- sadly.

But, just out of curiosity, I just now went over to US eBay and did a search on what I consider to be the two most important tools for camera and lens repair -- lens spanners and crosspoint screwdrivers. I got 324 hits for lens spanners and 204 hits for crosspoint screwdrivers. After paging through several dozen listings for each, I was heartened to find that there were at least a handful of listings for what appear to be decent tools. I also checked for lens grease and got 44 hits, so that was also heartening to see. Another tool I consider to be necessary with my fumble fingers is a good set of extra fine-point tweezers. Again, on eBay, I got hundreds of hits -- even when I toggled on "US Only" and I found at least a couple designs, made from stainless steel, I think would be perfecting suitable. So all is not lost yet -- and hopefully won't be for some time.


Yes, those particular items can still be found fortunately, although the choice of lens spanners used to be greater. Now it's a limited same few 5 or 6 designs in hundreds of different listings, which are OK if you don't mind marring the slots in the lens retaining ring. I've got a few of those, but they are not as good as the other ones I have which I bought from Micro-Tool many years ago, some of which they no longer carry.

Micro-tools also used to stock a much more varied range of camera screws in many more combinations of diameters, head-style, finish, length etc. Now I simply scavenge scrap lenses and cameras and keep the screws (and some other bits).

Maybe eBay in the US is different; here in the UK if I search eBay for pretty much any item I get hundreds of hits: a few from the UK, US, EU and Japan, and hundreds from China. If I filter "UK Only" I get a few from the UK, and still hundreds from China. eBay simply needs to policy their region qualification much better. They should differentiate regions between "UK stock" and "UK-registered seller" That would help for starters! Apparently filtering on "Collection in person" predictably gets rid of most of the Chinese listings, but unfortunately that also filters out too many relevant UK listings.


PostPosted: Sun Feb 20, 2022 4:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Some of the "Cell Phone Repair Tools" look interesting...


PostPosted: Sun Feb 20, 2022 5:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
visualopsins wrote:
Some of the "Cell Phone Repair Tools" look interesting...


Yes, you have to think outside of the box a bit. I also use solder assist tools in my lens & camera repairs, like the ones below. Great for scraping, wedging, manipulating springs etc.

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