What AI Can’t Do
The world seems to have gone mad over this AI thing. So many are convinced it can do everything. Well… no. It can’t make babies, though some would argue. It can’t hug you. It can’t tell you a bedtime story. There’s a gazillion other things it can’t do. And fixing a half-dead camera from 1959-ish is definitely one of them.
I own two Rolleicords Va-II. As soon as I bought my first one I sent it off for CLA to Poland. Last September (2024), during shooting in Malta, its shutter broke. I bought another, second, Rolleicord. But I still needed the first one fixed. I thought, who’d know these marvels better than those who once made them? Of course—the Germans. So I sent the broken camera to Düsseldorf. The Germans did an amazing job on it. It wasn’t cheap, and I had to wait almost two months. But it was worth it. So, being a happy customer, I sent my other Rollei to the same crowd in Düsseldorf for a CLA.
But it wasn’t the final bill or the long waiting that made my heart jolt and my knees buckle, leaving me perched on the edge of my desk. What really terrified me was the thought that one day there might be no one left in the whole universe who could fix these beautiful panzers.
Snipers know their tools inside out. They can strip them down, clean and oil every part, then put them back together blindfolded.
I know my Rolleis too… but only from the outside. So I figured it was time to invest more effort in understanding the insides of my kleine Panzer ( little tanks).
I bought a third, kind-of-broken Rolleicord Va to be my guinea pig and, inevitably, a donor for my other two Rolleicords. Yeah, eBay was my friend.
The shutter wasn’t too bad. The mere fact it was still in the camera pleased me a lot. And it actually worked too… to a degree. One-second shutter speed lasted anywhere between a minute and a day. Bulb mode… Well, I could wait forever for the shutter to open. And then it wouldn’t close. Unless I used a faster speed.
The whole camera looked like the All Blacks had played with it, then took it to the beach to dig trenches.
It was almost midnight. I made myself a cup of strong coffee and headed to my small studio. The warm beam of the desk lamp cut through the darkness, throwing the half-dead camera into the spotlight. Sitting in my leather chair, which my cats had claimed as their personal claw-sharpening device despite all my protests, I stared at the poor thing for nearly an hour. To revive or not to revive that was the question I kept battling in my head.
It must’ve seen a lot in its nearly 70-year life. It didn’t deserve to end up as a donor. It deserved to live.
A few days of intense research followed. I gathered enough theoretical knowledge to attempt resurrecting the old Rolleicord.
Armed with all the necessary tools and three YouTube videos, I spent over a week operating on the little tank. Disassembling and fixing the shutter alone took me four days. I even managed to calibrate the shutter speeds manually to an acceptable level. I doubt it could compete with its digital counterparts in precision, but it was good enough for me.
Then, even though I’d documented every move and step, I couldn’t get everything back together. Eventually, I figured out what I was doing wrong. The position of the self-timer lever proved crucial during reassembly.
And somehow, the two lenses ended up misaligned. I nearly went mad trying to figure that one out. Then, by accident, I found the culprit. The parallax mechanism arm wasn’t in the right spot and was pushing the lens plate out.
More coffee and sleepless nights followed. Cats trying to ram my studio door open. When brute force failed, they became vocal. That’s when I surrendered and opened the door. Claws sharpened, more leather shredded.
With the bandits (cats) gone, I went ahead and removed the camera’s side covers. A magnificent view awaited me. The simple beauty of old-school mechanical marvel.
I had to remove and put the front plate and sides back on so many times that after a week I was doing it ten times faster and while drinking coffee, listening to Chet Baker, talking to my mum, brother, and daughter on the phone, feeding birds, and fighting aliens.
Well… I lied about the birds.
So yeah, I fixed the camera. It’s now in full working condition. I’d say that, like a sniper, I now know my weapon’s inside just as well as its outside.
And no—AI can’t do that.