Stumbled into a camera repair shop in Portland that blew my mind

I was visiting Portland last month and found this tiny repair shop tucked behind a coffee place. They had this old guy working on a Leica M3 from the 60s, and he let me watch for a bit. I noticed he was using a homemade tool to adjust the shutter speeds, like a little bent piece of metal. He said most of the official tools are lost or too expensive now, so you gotta make do. I asked him about cleaning fungus off lenses and he showed me this trick with a UV light and hydrogen peroxide mix. It was wild to see someone so comfortable working without all the modern gear. Has anyone else found a repair shop that still does things the old school way?

3 comments

3 Comments

thomas29112d ago

Yeah actually I used to think old tools were just nostalgia but that changed my mind completely.

felix1551mo ago

Drove through Portland a few years back and found a shop that still used a soldering iron from the 40s to fix old transistor radios, guy said he never bothered upgrading cause the new ones melt the solder too fast.

oliver_mitchell1mo ago

I saw a documentary about camera repair guys in Japan doing basically the same thing, making tools from scratch because the old ones are impossible to find. That UV light trick with hydrogen peroxide is pretty common in vintage camera circles, I read a forum post where someone restored a 50 year old lens that way and it came out crystal clear. The old school repair folks are dying breed, especially the ones who can work on mechanical Leicas without sending them off to a factory. There's a guy in New York who still adjusts rangefinders using nothing but a tiny screwdriver and his own eyes, no calibration tools at all. It's refreshing to see people keeping those skills alive instead of just tossing cameras when they break.