MBobbie
Member
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2020
- Messages
- 5
- Photography Experience
- Intermediate
- Photo Editing Experience
- Intermediate
- Edit my images ?
- Yes (recommended)
Hi everyone,
Just opened my account because i am looking for some people that might have some more experience navigating through the world of vintage camera restoration.
After starting again with the analogue hobby with a suprisingly pristine and cheap mamiya m645J and a not so pristine and relatively expensive Olympus OM-10 I am recently getting into some vintage folders from between the early 30's till the late 50's. My current (small) collection holds a Tower Foldex 20 'box' folder, a zeiss Ikon Nettar 518/16 and now also a Balda Baldax from the early 50's. This last one has thrown me for a loop a bit trying to research it. Let me explain.
I purchased this camera mostly on a whim for about 20 euro's on my local online second hand market. The guy selling the camera didn't seem to know what it was so i took a bit of a gamble. The camera arrived in a very nice state but it does have some issues due to bad storage. Especially the viewfinder is as if i am trying to look through porridge and the lens has almost frost-like speckles over the entire front element. Here is an image for illustration purposes, in my case it is way less severe:

I expect some fungus but especially because it is a very nice 75mm f2.9 schneider-kreuznach (from now on: S-K) with prontor-sv shutter i am thinking of giving it a shot to clean it up.
The biggest struggle was trying to find anything out about this camera or to find any repair guides about it. The balda camera that the internet is plastered with is the much more common Balda Super Baldax with coupeled rangefinder and with a whole range of lenses (but not my lens) and shutters. On camerapedia i found out that this is probably one of the first generations of post-war baldax camera's since it looks like a Baldix but it has a shot counter (only on the post-war baldax) and a S-K lens (not on the baldix).
Here is the only image i can find on google images to show the modell:

Does anyone happen to have some, or at least any experience in cleaning the viewfinder of this camera and lens?
If so, please indulge me in some information to help me fix the problems.
If this turns out to be a conundrum for even this forum i will be going along with trying to disassemble and clean it anyway and will keep this thread posted on the progress, and then will also try to do it with my own images instead of the google images i used for now
Thanks for your attention and speak to you soon!
Just opened my account because i am looking for some people that might have some more experience navigating through the world of vintage camera restoration.
After starting again with the analogue hobby with a suprisingly pristine and cheap mamiya m645J and a not so pristine and relatively expensive Olympus OM-10 I am recently getting into some vintage folders from between the early 30's till the late 50's. My current (small) collection holds a Tower Foldex 20 'box' folder, a zeiss Ikon Nettar 518/16 and now also a Balda Baldax from the early 50's. This last one has thrown me for a loop a bit trying to research it. Let me explain.
I purchased this camera mostly on a whim for about 20 euro's on my local online second hand market. The guy selling the camera didn't seem to know what it was so i took a bit of a gamble. The camera arrived in a very nice state but it does have some issues due to bad storage. Especially the viewfinder is as if i am trying to look through porridge and the lens has almost frost-like speckles over the entire front element. Here is an image for illustration purposes, in my case it is way less severe:

I expect some fungus but especially because it is a very nice 75mm f2.9 schneider-kreuznach (from now on: S-K) with prontor-sv shutter i am thinking of giving it a shot to clean it up.
The biggest struggle was trying to find anything out about this camera or to find any repair guides about it. The balda camera that the internet is plastered with is the much more common Balda Super Baldax with coupeled rangefinder and with a whole range of lenses (but not my lens) and shutters. On camerapedia i found out that this is probably one of the first generations of post-war baldax camera's since it looks like a Baldix but it has a shot counter (only on the post-war baldax) and a S-K lens (not on the baldix).
Here is the only image i can find on google images to show the modell:

Does anyone happen to have some, or at least any experience in cleaning the viewfinder of this camera and lens?
If so, please indulge me in some information to help me fix the problems.
If this turns out to be a conundrum for even this forum i will be going along with trying to disassemble and clean it anyway and will keep this thread posted on the progress, and then will also try to do it with my own images instead of the google images i used for now
Thanks for your attention and speak to you soon!