I bought a broken lomo fisheye 1 on ebay last week, it arrived this morning and I've got a bit of time to try and fix it.
The camera wasn't in too bad a condition, the internals were clean. The only problem was the shutter had got stuck down after apparently being dropped into sand. I looked around the web. First I found three (
one two three) photos of the inside of a fisheye but there weren't any instructions on how to disassemble it.
I looked around a bit more and found a related
article about removing the fisheye lense and putting it onto a digitial SLR. It says that the lens ring can be removed by twisting it. This may work on some models but this particular one wouldn't budge. It looked like the ring had been either glued in place or was a single mold (although this wouldn't explain how the screws holding the lense in place could have been done up).
I managed to get the camera completely apart with only one slight side effect - I don't have a ring on the lense anymore, the only downside to this is that the lense cover no longer fits *oh well*.
So here are the steps to get at the guts of the camera.
1. Remove the four screws which are holding the the case on. There are two on the left side and two on the right just behind the film advance roller. It's quite easy to remove the screws on the left, however the screws by the film advance are quite difficult to see so you'll need a good light and ideally a magnetic screwdriver. It's much more difficult to put film advance screws back in as you can't see the holes and the screws will keep moving around.
2. After removing the rubber sleeve from the lense the case will come off but only as far as the lense ring.
On some models the ring can be turned and removed, however on the model I have this wasn't the case. It seems that the ring is glued in place. After examining it for some time I decided on a last resort bearing in mind I just bought a £35 camera for £4.
I got a butter knife from the kitchen and tried to prise the ring by placing the knife in the crack just below the ring. It didn't move at first but then something unexpected happened, the ring plastic started to go white a split. After a momentary oops moment I realised that this was probably the only way of getting the ring off. I continued very carefully and managed to remove the whole of the ring. As you can see the ring ended up in about four pieces and it was not possible to put it back onto the lense) without disturbing or damaging the lense.
The case can now be removed complete from the internals of the camera. The problem that needed fixing was that the shutter was stuck down.
To remove the lense you just remove the four screws
situated at each of its corners.
In my excitement I forgot to take a picture of the shutter mechanism although you can see the top of it just poking out above the lense. It's basically a flat piece of plastic with two slits down the middle. The plastic moves down by pressure from the fingure and up by a small spring.
Each slit has a screw and a washer. In this case there were several bits of sand between the washers, the shutter plastic and the back of the lense. I undid both screws very slightly and this resolved the problem.
Here are a couple more photos of the camera.
This is the bottom of the camera. Notice that the lense no longer has the rim. I'm assuming the green component is part of the flash circuit.
The top of the camera with the shutter mechanism in clearly visible in white.
Now I just need to buy a film to put in it.....
Tips and Suggestions that I mostly learnt the hard way:-
Removing the door makes it easier later on.
Remember to put the door latch back on the side and also remember to put the flash button back in (and the right way up) before putting the case back on.
Remember to put the door back on before doing up the four screws.
