Dial Repairs

I love a camera with real gears inside it

I met up with Ian today for a coffee. I took along my Canon Dial 35 to take some snaps. Coffee was great and then I wandered down Newland Avenue with the camera. It was a lovely day and there were lots of photo-worthy things around. The Dial 35 winds on the film automatically, which made taking lots of pictures really easy. Then it made a funny noise and stopped. Oh dear. Then I pressed the rewind button to return the film to the cassette and it made an even funnier noise. Oh double dear.

When I got home I put the camera in my light tight bag and took a look at it with my fingers. The film had come all the way out of the cassette and wrapped itself around the take up spool. I managed to recover the problem and get the film back in the cassette for developing later. But the camera still didn’t want to work.

So I took the film winder spring off the bottom and had a poke around. I think a thing which is supposed to move smoothly up and down is not doing that. I’ve freed it off a bit, added a tiny amount of oil, put everything back together and it seems to work. I really hope it is mended. It has a super sharp lens and takes really good pictures.