I'm looking for anyone who has information on this specific model, or who has knowledge of the components which I suppose should probably have been reused across the Chinon line. I was recently gifted this camera and I'm keen to understand as much as I can about it, to hopefully replace some parts but also to better shoot some tapes on it.
There are two things I'm mainly curious about:
1) It has a selector to switch between auto and manual, but no controls to actually manipulate exposure with, that I can see anyway... It also simply says in the manual that exposure is selected automatically and refuses to elaborate!
2) The viewfinder is really interesting, what I originally thought was a missing part seems to in-fact be the default rubber eye (rest?) which is tiny with the internal diameter at just 11mm and the external diameter at 22mm. I thought it had perhaps originally come with a larger eye cup which slid over the attached one but all the promotional images and the front of the manual don't reflect that. I want to identify a replacement eye cup or some kid of attachment which would make looking through the viewfinder more comfortable, but also I want to understand how the assembly works, it appears to be a lens inside a long tube that screws into the camera body, with threading that runs the entire length of it, with a small rubber cup on the end that protrudes. This small rubber cup (which you should be able to see if you look at an image of the camera online) appears to have been attached but I think due to age the rubber has degraded and while it does slip on to the tube part, nothing is holding it in place.
If anyone has experience with this camera (or I suppose any of the other Chinon Dart line as I would assume there would be similarities), I'd love to learn more about it, I don't have the camera with me at the moment but I'll take some photos of the parts and upload them when I get a chance.
Thanks!