Finally with it all together I got a chance to take it out for a spin with some real film. Unfortunately, it was also my first time zone-focusing and 80% of my shots were a blurry mess lol. I'm pretty damn proud of getting this thing working, and the blur has it's own charms.

With it locked open I could focus another trusted camera at infinity and adjust the helicoid. When the sellotape comes into focus then helicoid *should* also be at infinity.

The absolutely foul view from the reference camera is lubricant from a messy second attempt.

Once the assembly was back together I had to figure out a way to re-calibrate the focus. That means locking the shutter and aperture open somehow. I couldn't find any documentation online, so made do with a nitrile glove and a screwdriver. Sellotape standing in for a real collimation target.

Somehow all ball springs and screws were still accounted for and after a tedious clean with a toothbrush, peroxide and isopropyl everything went back together quite nicely.

With an unscientific blend of white lithium grease and PTFE and it's nice and smooth.

Unfortunately the ASA ring was pretty severely damaged, and it wouldn't turn without a lot of force. I considered getting a new one machined and started measuring up, but that was tedious. So instead I took it out the back and beat with a shovel, a rubber glove and a mallet.

It turns out the missing flag was there all along, but somehow it had slipped underneath the main rocker arm for the shutter. I'm not sure how that possibly could have happened, but with some careful pressure I was able to flex it enough to get it back into the right order.

Getting the core assembly out was a lot easier than I expected. Everything mostly only goes in one way, so not much worry about alignment. I could have de-soldered the PC flash sync wire to make it easier to handle, but I'm lazy. The hardest part was separating the bent and seized lens elements.

Anyway, apparently selenium degradation might be a bit of a myth, and these sensors tend to hold up well. Instead it's the electrical contacts that degrade over time. Opening it up, it's clear the the galvanometer still works reasonably well.

Apparently a common failure mode for these cameras is for the selenium light detector to degrade and meter every scene as too dark. When a shot would be underexposed a little red flag should appear in the viewfinder and the shutter shouldn't fire.

Instead, well... there's no flag at all?

I found this Olympus-Pen EES-2 while helping my parents move house. It was obviously beat to hell, and the lens was barely still attached, but I grabbed it anyway. I've never repaired a camera before, but I thought "hey, I can't make it any worse right?"