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Leicina 8SV tips, possible repair leads in the US


Joel Chevallier

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This is a double 8 camera, but since there’s no sub-forum for the brand of camera or format I figured this would sit nicely here. I recently purchased two “working” Leicina cameras off ebay. Neither are ready to shoot film. They both suffer from the same issue: When loaded with film, they only generate enough torque to shoot when set at 24fps. The camera only has two FPS settings: 16, and 24. I usually shoot 18 or 16 to conserve film, so being able to shoot at 16fps is important.   I’ve opened them up and done some light cleaning, checked the contacts, etc. I put grease on one spot directly behind the take up spool spoke that spins, which is the first stet of gears just past the dc motor. This is the only spot that grease seemed necessary. I wasn’t confident grease and oil wouldn’t degrade any of the other gears, so I figured wait until I’ve reached out to the community. 

Sadly, the only place I could find the service manual (craigcamera.com) is out of business and the various other sites that sell older manuals and camera literature don’t seem to have a copy. The camera has only a few posts online (one or two here that I found) and very little in the way of information, videos, etc. For a camera so beautifully designed, from an esteemed company, with a lens loved (Angenieux K2, which I believe is the same as the one on my Carena Zoomex shooters) I don’t understand the dearth of information or interest. 

Can anyone help me by pointing me to either a repair manual, a repair person in the states? I’ve used Simon Wyss for my Beaulieu TR, and Bjorn Andersson for my Beaulieu wind-powered r16, and they are top notch to be sure. But Covid has done a number on mail,  and I’m hoping this might be something even some sort of small electronics repair shop could help with if it requires rebuilding the DC motor.  

Any information on how to get one of these working reliably would be very appreciated. I have a small amount of money saved for repair, but I’d be happy to also compensate someone if they are able to help me / coach me through the repair as well, if that’s feasible. 

Thanks everyone!

Joel-David Chevallier

Design + Production

jdchevallier.com

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The parcel services like UPS are much more reliable than regular mail at the moment. I sent a camera motor to the States a month ago via UPS Saver and it took exactly the normal expected delivery time.  On the other hand, mail has been extremely unpredictable nowadays (3 months for a small package from the USA to here and lots of variation between European countries. For example you can expect the shipping from Germany to Finland to arrive in about the normal time (something like from 6 to 10 days) but from Austria (the neighbouring country of Germany) it will take from 1 to 2 months. The orders from Ukraine have arrived very fast (maybe 7 or 8 days or so) but everything ordered from Russia will always take exactly 2 months to arrive. 

So if wanting to ship anything to the Europe, I would use a parcel service like UPS or FedEx and forget about using normal mail. The normal mail just does not work reliably at the moment. 

The Leicina cameras have a centrifugal switch which regulates the motor speed (or in the case of the Leicina SV, you have two switches, one for every camera speed). I haven't really tested calibrating these because I am only interested in converting these cameras to crystal sync which requires getting rid of the original centrifugal switch anyway. 

The motor is not very powerful so a mechanical problem will easily slow the camera down considerably. If the camera is not properly serviced then that could cause the problems (the film transport causing too much friction. For example the pulldown system has a wheel on which the claw system slides on and that can cause lots of friction if there is no lubricants on the surfaces at all. Of course the centrifugal switches or the motor can also be faulty but I would look for mechanical issues first :) 

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