Cows (and bringing an Olympus OM-10 back to life)

This is, more or less, the view from our kitchen window these days.  The farmer has put half a dozen cows in the fields to graze, along with their calves.  The wee ones are cute but are heavily guarded by the mammas.  Even if my wife or I just step into the garden their eyes are on us, watching to see what we're up to.  Start to approach them and they stand up, turning to face us as if to say, 'Hold on there a minute, buddy - don't be coming any closer'.  Needless to say I stay this side of the post-and-wire fence around our garden.

OM1/135mm; HP5+ on Adox MCC paper

The 135mm Zuiko that this was taken on was a rare charity shop find.  It came with an OM-10 in a very nice brown leather hard case, which I think is an original Olympus item although the only identification mark on it is a 'Made in Japan' embossed stamp.  The OM-10 was in great cosmetic order - not a mark on it.  Unfortunately, though, it was locked up solid - the mirror was half-up/down, it didn't wind on, shutter release didn't work and the meter wasn't functional.  A new set of LR44 batteries didn't appear to have any effect but I took it home anyway.  I looked at a couple of YouTube videos and websites and thought, Well, I might as well have a tinker as there was nothing to lose.  I unscrewed the four small screws on the baseplate.  They are tiny, and look identical but in actual fact the middle screw is every so slightly longer than the others.  Took me a while to figure that out.  With the baseplate off I could see that I was well out of my depth - it's a mass of small gears and levers and I was only going to do more harm than good.  So I put the baseplate back on and turned my attention to the stuck mirror.  There's a slider on the right of the mirror assembly which seemed to reset it in the down position so I worked with that a few times and I thought it did seem to free up a little.  Or maybe it was my imagination - it was still a dead camera.  

The OM-10 has an electronically controlled shutter.  From what I read online there's a 'dead battery' fixed shutter speed of 1/60th of a second but as I said, this camera was locked solid, even with brand new batteries installed.  It was clear, however, that someone must have forced the meter on/off switch (which surrounds the rewind crank) past its normal range - it was loose and wasn't stopping at the On, Off or Check positions as I rotated it.   A YouTube video showed me how to take it apart - there's a big screw in the middle of the rewind crank, so it's pretty straightforward, although you have to open the back and jam something in the rewind mechanism to stop it turning in order to get purchase on the screw.  With the rewind crank off the meter dial just lifts away.  Ah-ha...I could see that the electrical contacts had been bent out of shape, which obviously wasn't going to help matters.  I straightened them out,  re-assembled the dial and rewind crank and guess what...it worked!  As I set the dial to the On position I heard a faint click and the whole camera sprang into life - everything seemed to reset itself.  The mirror returned to the normal position, I could fire the shutter (all the speeds seemed OK) and it wound on without a problem.  A quick look through the viewfinder confirmed all was well - even the Leds lit up as expected.  I was rather proud of myself - apart from changing light seals that's the first camera 'repair' I've attempted.

I've still a little work to do on the meter switch as although it makes contact as I turn it to the 'On' position it's still rotates freely and doesn't 'click' into the On, or Off positions as I'm sure it should.  However, I've seen from another YouTube video that there's a detent lever under the contacts which (a) sometimes falls out of place due to wear on the plastic rivets and (b) needs to be aligned with the rewind lever during re-assembly.  So when I get a spare hour I'll take the switch off again and see if I can get it re-assembled correctly.  In the meantime I've still got a fully functional OM-10, so I'm a happy boy.