Akarelle

Akarelle I
Akarelle I

I’ve stumbled over this camera, an AkArelle I from the mid 1950s, whilst looking for spare-parts of my Arette BN. Little did I know about the German company AkA Apparate und Kamerabau Gmbh which has been founded in 1946 by the brothers Dr. Eugen Armbruster and Dr. Max Armbruster, starting manufacture in a disused hotel in Wildbach, a town in the Black Forest.

Over time, the company grew considerably and eventually settled down in a former preschool for aviation technics at the beautiful Lake Constance, producing my little camera. If you are interested in the history of AkA as well as all the series and models which have been produced, I kindly invite you to visit Martin Kohler’s website.

The AkArelle has a very pleasant and smooth form. The upper, lower and front parts are chrome-plated, unfortunately, the front-cover easily wears off over time, hence you will see the brass shining through. Nonetheless, my sample is overall in a good shape and after CLA, working as expected.

When it comes the camera’s specialities, it is the support for interchangeable lenses, back-wards compatible with AkaRette, the (uncoupled) viewfinder with bright frames, indicating the focal lengths for 50/75/90mm and the combined film advance and shutter cocking feature – something that not that usual back in those times.

The CLA was rather straight forward, with the Prontor SVS shutter being accessible from front and the relevant mechanics being easily accessible by removing 4 screws exposed behind the chrome-plated front elements. Unfortunately, I could not completely CLA the film advance mechanism as there was a screw I did not manage to remove and I did not want to ruin anything. However, I’ve managed to take off the old and sticky grease. Top and bottom covers are held by screws with the top cover requiring to remove rewind knob and film advance lever. Not special tools are required 🙂

See my journey in pictures below and as usual, reach out to me on FB or through the comments section on this page, should you have some questions on the CLA process.

King Regula IIId – part II (Prontor-SVS)

Some “first-timers” here: Prontor-SVS, shutter for interchangeable lenses and lengthy process to get the delayed action device doing its work. But step-by-step:

Prontor-SVS shutter for interchangeable Lenses
Prontor-SVS shutter for interchangeable Lenses

Given the Kind Regula IIId features support for interchangeable lenses, there must be an extra safety measure put in place to prevent light from entering the camera when changing the lenses. Gauthier therefore came up with the system of light-sealing shutter blades which only remain open until the shutter completes its cycle.

My challenge was to fully access both shutter and light sealing blades as you need to remove the pin in the chocking shaft, which took more efforts than simply removing the tiny screw holding the pin in place but carefully hammering the pin out of the shaft. I’m pretty sure there was a more convenient tool available back in the 50es 🙂 The reason for the difficulty is the pin being bulged in the middle to hold tightly in the shaft. I’d assume this was an extra safety measurement besides the screw.

Prontor-SVS cocking pin
Prontor-SVS cocking pin

Cleaning and reassembly of the different shutter blades was pretty straight forward and so was the rest of the shutter parts. The fun really started when I realised that the delayed action device (aka selftimer) did not remain chocked but always would snap back into its relaxed state. Clearly some timing was off, but which one? First, I read through the very long Prontor SV, SVS and Pronto shutter repair manual but was not exactly clear in which direction I would need to bend the nose of the cocking arm, so I went with the second option which was to compare to a similar Prontor SVS shutter.

I therefore took the (working) shutter of a rather similar Kind Regula IIId automatic apart and compared the two cocking arms and it became immediately obvious what could be wrong:

Prontor-SVS cocking arm 
Prontor-SVS cocking arm

On top is the one from the IIId automatic, underneath the one from the IIId. I’ve bent the latter to look similar to the first and the selftimer would now remain wound up and would run down when engaging it!!

With this adjustment done, I could put the remaining parts of the shutter together and proceed with the reassembly of the body. See part III.

Some more pictures of the shutter – for your reference.