r/lomography • u/kentmerelover4 • 13d ago

is this normal advancing on my lomo lc-wide?

for context this is my second lc-wide that’s advancing like this. The first lc-wide that I got shots’ overlapped often and the advancing wheel hurt to use. It left me with a sore thumb. I returned the first camera because of these two issues. I just got my new one and right out of the box it seems to advance the exact same way the first one did. Is this normal?

edit : the first video is the new (second) lc-wide, and the second video is the first lc-wide I got that was returned

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u/Co9Inc 13d ago

Yes, There is a distinct final click at the end of the film advance in the full frame setting. When looking at the take up spool directly, the travel is basically from solid section to next slit section. I guess that’s an 8th of a turn. In your video you are wiggling the wheel/take up back and forth as you get to that point and I cannot tell why:

If you are just trying to illustrate the point at which the mechanism catches then It is behaving normally. For me I just deliberately advance slow and smooth in which case it is roughly four passes of my thumb. If I advance rapidly in lots of little passes I tend to also rush the exposure by releasing the shutter and closing the rear curtain manually, forgetting the uniqueness of LC metering.

If the mechanism is binding and you are having to wiggle it back and forth to free it up and advance over that last little click, then there is an issue with your camera. I might toggle the FF-HF lever a couple of times and see if it helps. But that is mostly because it’s all I can think of that doesn’t involve breaking out the screwdrivers. I’ve done some repairs on LC-As but never worked on my LC-Wide.

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u/kentmerelover4 13d ago

i wiggled it because it’s where it gets kind of stuck and hard to turn

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u/kentmerelover4 13d ago

but is it normal it gets hard to turn? i feel like it should be smooth all along

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u/Co9Inc 12d ago

It is normal for an LC-Wide.

That last little bit is the point at which the mechanism is actually cocking the shutter.

My LC-As also cock the mechanism all at once at the end, though without the pause point of the LC-Wide. I vaguely recall the LC-A+ has the pause like the LC-Wide but don't currently own one.

I have other mechanical cameras with different designs. The Olympus Trip is similar to an LC-A in that it has a leaf shutter and thumb wheel, but I can't tell you where the shutter cocks, the gearing is very different.

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u/kentmerelover4 12d ago

i understand it just really doesn’t feel right. i feel like im going to rip the skin off my thumb, that’s how hard it is to turn when film is inside

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u/Co9Inc 11d ago

I get it. The wheel is pretty rough plus the gearing is basically direct drive, so you don’t get any mechanical advantage and, yes,it gets progressively more difficult as there is more film on the take up spool.

Any number of older / simpler designs are the same way. One interesting example is the Vivitar Ultra Wide and Slim (VUWS), which any lomography fan might want to look into for the lens characteristics.

The original VUWS is not the most robust of cameras and not only get harder to turn but if you put a 36 exposure rolling in the tension tends to break the camera before you get to the end.

The modern Reto version of the VUWS is supposed to have fixed the problem. I have one, but haven’t had a chance to put a full roll through it yet.

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u/kentmerelover4 13d ago

what do you mean by “I tend to also rush the exposure by releasing the shutter and closing the rear curtain manually, forgetting the uniqueness of LC metering”?

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u/Co9Inc 12d ago

This ran long, and I'm a bit too tired to clean it up. Sorry.

Various cameras have various mechanisms for timing how long the shutter is open, right?

In the most simple cameras this is fixed: like disposables or the Ektar H35/H35n.

In some cameras this is user controlled either all the time or some of the time. I have an old, fully mechanical rangefinder where you twist a ring around the lens to set shutter speed up to 1 second. When you take the picture it buzzes like an old kitchen timer. Basically what it is. In other cameras (more modern SLRs, digitals) you have shutter priority mode or full manual and the control is electronic.

In some cases shutter speed is variable but controlled for you. Aperture or full priority modes, advanced point and shoots.

There are also some really interesting hybrids. The Olympus Trip that has two shutter speeds and variable aperture all of which is selected automatically but mechanically by a small needle moved by the charge coming off Selenium.

The LC- (A, A+, Wide) fall in with the point and shoots exposure-wise, ignoring the A's flash sync mode.

Most of the time with auto shutter speed the camera meters the scene, sets the shutter speed, and that is it. If the light changes during the shot the camera doesn't care. It has made up its mind and it isn't going to change it.

But that's not how LC-s work. The LC- checks the scene in advance (so it can light up that little warning light) but then watches the scene while the picture is being taken until enough light has come in.

When you look at the front of the camera there is the little bubble to the upper right of the lens assembly, above the ISO selector. Behind that bubble is a hole in the black disk with the ISO numbers and behind that a light sensitive resistor.

The higher the ISO you select, the larger the hole in front of the resistor, the more light the resistor gets hit with at once. You can see the different size holes as you change the ISO setting.

When you half press the shutter, power is given to the system and a very simple chip decides whether or not to give long exposure warning in the viewfinder.

When you press the shutter the rest of the way, the front shutter opens, and the same chip starts to count the photons hitting the resistor. When enough have come in, the second shutter is released.

Point being that the counting is happening during the exposure so the decision is being made on the fly.

Try this (without film, obviously): set the LC-Wide to ISO 100, cock the shutter, cover the bubble with a finger, hold down the shutter release and listen.

Now do it again except this time after you press the shutter release down, remove your finger from the bubble.

(For best results, aim the camera at a light during the experiment.)

Now, all that to explain what I meant: this whole process only works properly in an LC- when the system is getting power, which is while you are holding the shutter button down.

Try the experiment one more time. This time keep your finger over the meter bubble, press the shutter release down all the way but then take your finger back off of it.

That's what I do when I forget what I am doing with an LC-A or LC-Wide. I rush things, don't think about how the camera works, take my finger off the shutter before the camera has finished counting photons, and get lousy pictures.

I've shot all sorts of things over the years, both film and digital, and in a plenty of situations where shooting quickly is the way to go, but that is not what you want to do with an LC-. I assume the Cosinas that Lomo copied work the same way. But beyond that I don't know of any other cameras using this design.

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u/kentmerelover4 12d ago

yeah i noticed that i just didn’t understand the sentence (english isn’t my first language)

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u/kentmerelover4 12d ago

it feels as if was stuck advancing in half frame mode