The camera in the photo above is my venerable Mamiya C33, introduced by Mamiya in 1965, just five years after I graduated from high school. It is built like a tank, works great, and produces images of super quality. As I said before, it looks impressive as hell when sitting atop a nice, sturdy tripod.
The problem was that the C33 had no self-timer, and my wimpy air release just couldn't cut the mustard. I tried all sorts of things to make the shutter action more hair-trigger, but those remedies prevented secure cocking of the shutter. I thought about getting one of those vintage mechanical self-timers that you screw into the cable-release socket, but the world has changed in some quite inconvenient ways. On Ebay, those little devices are now collector's items and cost a bunch, plus about US$21 additional for shipping. One Ebay seller had a collection of forty-seven of them, which he was trying to unload for over a thousand dollars. I'm not making this up. I decided to forget Ebay.
Finding a solution was just a matter of more flexible thinking. Instead of trying to work with the cable-release socket, it occurred to me to just attach some kind of wire to the thumb-release knob, threading the wire downward and outward. The camera is plenty heavy, even without the tripod, so I would be unlikely to pull it over. I found just the right thing, attached it, and voilà! I'm now almost finished with a roll of Ilford HP5+, which I'm hoping to develop tomorrow. Needless to say, I'll share some of the results with you.
(to be continued)
Text and image Copyright © 2022 by Donald C. Traxler aka Donald Jacobson Traxler.
