Manual Focus Lenses Forum

stevemark · Joined: 29 Apr 2011 Posts: 5303 Location: Switzerland

I just got a like-new Konica TC-X (the last ever Konica - made by Cosina though) which had its mirror locked in the upward position, and a shutter which would not fire.

I firts removed the bottom panel. After removing the screws the panel still was kind of stuck in the area of the battery cover. It took me quite a while to sort out what's going on - there's a kind of a "hook" which is connected to the front grip of the camera, and also a (very thin) wire connecting the battery cove with the camera body itself. Pushing the front grip a bit forward finally helped to free the bottom cover. To make things easier I did unsolder the wire mentioned above.

Here's the hook; the wire is already unsoldered / removed:

Bottom cover plate removed:

And here's the culprit:

Pushing that lever slightly did immediately un-lock the mirror, putting it back into its proper position.

Cocking the shutter and releasing it did lock the mirror again in its upper position. After repeating the cycle a few times, the mirror occasionally started to flip up and come down correctly. After some time and maybe hundred or so cycles the shutter / mirror now seems to work pretty reliable, although still a bit slow and reluctant from time to time. The shutter speeds seem to be OK (at least the longer ones), but the mirror sometimes still is moveing a bit slow.

Remounting the base plate was a bit tricky, again because of the "hook" mentioned above (of course you have to re-solder the battery cover before reassembling the camera). Again pushing the camera grip a bit away from the body itself was useful to bring the "hook" back into its proper position.

That was a small and rather easy fix, though a proper CLA of the shutter mechanism would have been better.

S