contax ax electrical problem? HELP!

[rbelyell]

i have really been enjoying my ax since i got it a few months ago. i was today shooting at a party, coming to the end of a roll of agfa chrome 1000. i had been taking pix, no problem. i took shot 33 of 36, just fine. i put the cam down for less than 10 seconds, picked it up and found no info in vf, film number is flashing alternately 3 and 4 in the lcd and i cant stop it no matter what i do. shutter will not fire, cam will not focus, dof button doesnt work. i take out battery and put in another, same thing. luckily i could rewind the film using the rewind button. now the lcd just flashes 00. i cannot set the iso, cant do anything! basically one second its working, next its totally messed up!

does anyone have any idea what happened and how to fix it?

[Orio]

It looks like your camera has some problem with the electronics inside, find the company which was the official Contax distributor in the New York state (or globally for the USA), and contact them. Chances are that they still have spare parts and can fix the problem.

In Italy the official Contax distributor is a company called FOWA and they still give assistance for Contax cameras. Both my RX and AX were CLAd by Fowa on behalf of the store where I bought them from prior to be sold to me.

[rbelyell]

thanks orio, thats what i was thinking. however, i am still so confused about the fact that this happened literally from one second to the next. it was working fine all day, then from 1 picutre to the next it went crazy. it makes me feel like i inadvertantly did something wrong, or hit some button etc...

[Orio]

I think that differently from mechanical wear, where one might experience some type of progressive failure, a sudden stop is what happens with electronics, one minute they work, the minute after they stop working. If it was only a matter of dirty or weak contacts to the LCD, the LCD display would appear/disappear at random, but the functions would always work. The fact that the functions are not working makes me think that in your case an electronic component is damaged, that is crucial in the processing of the information.
I think that resetting the camera (by removing all batteries) should make sure that the inconvenient is not caused by a wrongly hit button.

[rbelyell]

yes, unfortunately i think you are right...i only hope this is fixable and for a reasonable price. i really love this cam, it looks just beautiful cosmetically, and ive only had it for 3 months!

[Hari]

[rbelyell]

yes i have manual, but believe it or not it does not have a troubleshooting section!

problem is i took the film out and its still doing it! used to be even without film i could play around autofocusing lenses, testing exposure etc. but now i cant do anything tnat requies electronics--it just flashes 00 in lcd. and vf has absolutely no info. so disheartening...

[Orio]

[rbelyell]

hari, when this happened to you because of mis loaded film, did it happen immediately or after many shots?

[Hari]

it happened as soon as i loaded the film, inserted the new and fully charged batteries and i was ready to put the beast to task! the exact same thing you describe above - 00 kept flashing and nothing was working ... and this was the same evening i got the camera so i thought i had been cheated!!

i then took a deep breath, opened the back, reloaded the film, took out the batteries, put them back in after making sure + and - were correctly aligned and after i did all this, i then mounted the lens and set the camera to P - SAF - AFL, set the aperture to the minimum aperture [green number on MM type lenses] - focussed the lens to infinity - did a rain dance and prayed to the gods i usually dont believe in and peered through the VF - nothing. i couldnt see anything at all. nada. zilch.

then i found and released the vf shutter lever

thankfully it worked

did not have the problem again so i suggest you just load another roll of film, charge your batteries to full capacity, reset all the dials to your fav settings and mount a "standard" focal length like 50mm MM type

btw, this is from page 46 of the manual ->

"when the exposure counter in the display panel blinks and does not move from "00", the film is not advancing properly. Open the camera back and reload the film correctly again."

hope this helps, got my fingers crossed for you mate!

[rbelyell]

yeah, thats whats so wierd,that i was able to take 33 pictures before this happened. thats why i think orio is correct, its some kind of electrical failure...

btw, what is the "vf shutter release lever"?

[rbelyell]

well, thank you to both orio and hari. i didnt think it would work,but i triedloading another roll of film and it worked! everything is back on, nothings flashing, everything seems ok. whew! i still dont understandwhy the cam shut down after 33 pict ures from a 36 roll, but it seems fine now. i will beobviously looking out to see if it happens again at the end of this roll.

again thanks to both of you, i never wouldve thought of reloading anither roll.

tony

[Hari]

congrats! glad it worked out!

[Orio]

hurrah then!

[rbelyell]