Filmo 70-DR, Fixing a bent lens turret

Cole Seidl · May 17

I stumbled and fell, and my filmo dropped to the ground. The fall appears to have bent the lens turret. At a certain point in the rotation the gears no longer connect with the gears of the lens-objective turret.

I took the turret off, and it looks flat to my naked eye but if you place it on a flat surface you can feel it wobble.

Is this something I could potentially fix with a mallet? Or is there a more subtle move? I have a planned shoot with this camera next month, and I've gotten myself into a jam.

Dom Jaeger · May 18

It must be quite a deformation if the gears to the finder disengage, they're several mm thick. Surely you could see that?

A picture might help.

If the turret is deformed, it's very hard if not impossible to get it perfectly flat again. And of course the turret controls flange depth, which should be accurate to 0.01mm. So you won't be able to trust the lens focus marks. But Filmos are pretty tough, so I'd be surprised if it really is that bent.

Cole Seidl · May 18

4 minutes ago, Dom Jaeger said:

It must be quite a deformation if the gears to the finder disengage, they're several mm thick. Surely you could see that?

A picture might help.

If the turret is deformed, it's very hard if not impossible to get it perfectly flat again. And of course the turret controls flange depth, which should be accurate to 0.01mm. So you won't be able to trust the lens focus marks. But Filmos are pretty tough, so I'd be surprised if it really is that bent.

Here's a gallery of 4 pictures:
https://postimg.cc/gallery/51gSMcV

You can see the black that is normally covered by the turret exposed at one point, but the more I turn the turret the more the black is hidden.

I've also included two pics to show where the gears are engaging/disengaging based on where the turret is in its rotation.

And yes, this looks much more extreme than the turret disk does by itself when separate from the camera, which is where some of my confusion comes from. Maybe there's something else damaged that I'm missing?

Simon Wyss · May 18

How about the lenses?

Cole Seidl · May 18

4 hours ago, Simon Wyss said:

How about the lenses?

They all appear to be fine. When they are on the turret, you can tell something is wrong. One of them lists downward a bit. But off of the turret, they all stand completely straight. Glass elements are good.

Simon Wyss · May 18

If you feel like, I can take a shot at the turret and the camera. Please take information from my website

Shouldn’t cost a leg.

Cole Seidl · May 19

On 5/18/2026 at 8:24 AM, Simon Wyss said:

If you feel like, I can take a shot at the turret and the camera. Please take information from my website

Shouldn’t cost a leg.

Thanks Simon,

I may end up doing that in the near future. Unfortunately I still have a shoot in 3 weeks. Nothing major, but I'm going to keep fiddling in the meantime to see if I can find a workable short-term solution before shipping my camera off.

Cole Seidl · May 19

A few things I've observed.

The turret certainly seems a bit bent. I've added an image of me laying it flat on a surface.

Also there appears to be a small missing metal disk that should be holding the turret in place a bit more. There are 3 slots, and two of them have the disk protruding, but one is missing. I think possibly this is making matters worse

Cole Seidl · May 19

For reference, these are what the slots with the discs protruding look like:

Cole Seidl · May 31

I'm just going to post in this thread a final time for posterity...

I was able to have a friend with a home auto shop use a hydraulic press on the turret. What appears to have happened was that the threading for the lens is the weakest point of the turret. The 3 inch lens had enough leverage that it popped the threading out of whack and caused the whole disc to bow.

popping the threading back into place made a HUGE difference... but was not perfect. With some experimentation I think the turret is now useable, especially if I were to use it as a single or dual lens turret and just give up on using the third lens. However, there are still anxieties about the flange distance.

My solutions here are to use an old Pentax to C mount adaptor, which really minimizes the importance of flange distance, or buy a new turret to use until I have time/money to do some extensive testing with the bent one.

I was able to buy a spare turret from Magna-Tech and have it shipped in time to test out/make decisions for my upcoming shoot. From my perspective, it's perfect, and all the problems were contained to the turret itself.

What I learned:

1. Don't drop it.

2. The turret is definitely capable of being bent out of shape.

3. Hydraulic press works, but we need better calibrated tools to get it more precise.

4. Swapping out the parts worked very well, and Magna-Tech is very helpful on that front.