Fixing my Second Konica Auto S2

I first purchased a Konica Auto S2 when I was around 15 years old, probably near to the time they were released in 1965. It was my first ‘proper’ camera following on from a Kodak Instamatic 50. For several years, in fact until I bought a Pentax Spotmatic F it was my everyday camera. In those days I only shot Kodachrome, first the 25 and then the 64 and I was very happy with the results. I always used the full auto mode, not having an exposure meter and cannot remember a dud exposure (technically, not aesthetically, that is).

Some years later I lent it to my parents who were going on holiday to Japan and a Japanese chemist’s assistant broke it. That was the story, anyway. Last year I came across this article by Kevin Ortner where he uses an S2 in manual mode and I though ‘I wonder if I can find one for a non-silly price?’. £44.94 later and I’m once again the proud owner of a ‘near-mint, fully working’ example. Except, of course, it’s not fully working as the meter is dead. I powered it with a PX625 battery from Analogue Speciality Battery, a Made-in-Britain zinc-air replacement for the unobtainable mercury original.

Wind forward eight months and I decided it was time to try to fix my S2. This time I had to buy a lens dismantling tool to remove the front threaded ring to access the light sensor module. Unfortunately I didn’t take as many pictures as I thought I did but here is one of the original sensor:

This is called the TO5 encapsulation. They seem to be hard to find now. Google suggested a GL5528 light-dependent-resistor which looks like this:

The red disk I printed (4mm x 1mm) to retain the LDR in the hole in the front unit as here:

Again, according to Google, it is necessary to calibrate the LDR with a small internal potentiometer. Which does not live under the bottom plate, as AI asserted but underneath the top cover. This is easier said than done but I eventually found it:

You can just see the black conducting ring of the pot and the three brass terminals. I had to fashion a cocktail stick into a minute screwdriver and gradually push the wiper around until the meter, which you can see at the top of the above picture, seemed to agree with a phone app (I still haven’t got a light meter).

Reassembled and loaded with UltraMax 400, which I haven’t used before, I was just in time to take it to the annual car show at Grange-over-Sands. The pictures below were all taken in automatic mode, mostly at 1/250sec. Processed and scanned by filmprocessing.co.uk. Unadjusted.

The Hexanon lens (f/1.8 f=45mm 6 elements in 4 groups) is as sharp as I remember and the rangefinder is still spot-on. In fact I’m really pleased with the end result. I like UltraMax’s colours too so will be using it again.

My next project is a Petri 7 Half with a dead selenium cell. Wish me luck.

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