A few years ago, a friend in Oregon mailed me a plastic baggie filled with camera parts. Someone had taken an SLR body and almost totally disassembled it. One larger piece was the shutter mechanism assembly. With the assembly in my left hand, I cocked the spring, and found the release. The shutter ran off perfectly. So I decided the parts deserved reassembly.
When I was done, I had a Sears TLS. Made by Ricoh back in the late 1960s, it is a solidly constructed 35mm SLR, with a vertically running Copal type metal bladed shutter, and a mount that accepts Pentax type 42mm diameter screwmount lenses. I got everything to work except for the metering circuit.
A few years have passed.
This weekend I fitted the body with an Auto Rikenon f:1.7 / 50mm lens, packed it with a Gossen handheld meter, a roll of Walgreens ASA 200 print film, and this morning I headed out to the twice-annual South Lindbergh High School Flea Market. This is held on a school parking lot, with maybe 200 hundred vendor spaces.
Here are some results. "Red" seemed to be a theme today.
The camera seemed to do okay, except for a hint of what looks like flare or a small light leak across the bottom portion of many frames. I have not determined yet whether this is from the photo lab equipment, or from a failed light seal in the camera. It shows in the negatives, but only in the frame areas, not in the bars between frames.
All images are ©2006 E.J.Kowalski