Return of the D-I-Y Guy

On a whim, I decided that the MURK's lens needed to be fixed. The issue being that the aperture is stuck wide open - not overly useful unless all I want to do is shoot at f4. I've known for a while that is the little aperture-trigger-knob on the back of the lens that is the problem: something rattles. However, you can sometimes "fix" the lens temporarily by shaking vigorously - not practical and not a good luck.

So my solution? Wrap a whole lot of that horrible pink plastic twine around the aperture-trigger-knob-thingy (what do you actually call that?)  so it's permanently "out", and now the aperture responds accordingly. All that's needed now is to make allowances for this in the viewer - very difficult to accurately focus inside - but otherwise it works like a charm. It may even get a run at uni this summer...

Bad News - Agfa Isolette

My beloved Agfa Isolette II is "buggered" - I think. The shutter cocks, but stays cocked even after much coaxing, tapping, shaking, and (inevitably) shouting. It just sits there waiting for something to happen, but refuses to tell me what I should be doing.

I'm not sure if this is a common problem or not. If I'm feeling plucky one day, I might take it apart (plenty of guides online for doing this) and see if I can fluke a fix.

It'll be a damn shame if it's permanently broken. I quite like how compact it is for a 120 camera, the photos I've taken with it came out amazingly well, and it looks awesome. But it is about 55 years old, and considering it was $25AU in a junk shop, it's amazing it even still worked.

Here's hoping it's only a hiccup on an otherwise uninterrupted long-term photographic partnership.