In the years immediately following the Second World War, the victorious Soviet Union physically removed from Germany factories, often in their entirety bricks and all, for all manner of things, as “war reparations” and dragged them back into the Soviet motherland. Included in these were some of the Leica and Zeiss camera and lens plants, which resulted in a generation of Fed, Zorki and Kiev branded cameras appearing, along with M39 Leica screw mount Jupiter or Minatar lenses. Whilst back in what became East Germany, those factories that remained included Praktica and Carl Zeiss Jena (Jena being the city which housed the factory) whose MTL series camera and lenses would eventually arrive this side of the Iron Curtain as well.
Fast forward to the 1980’s and the Soviet Union was still struggling to produce the scope of consumer goods enjoyed by those living in the West, for both their internal markets, or for export. In terms of cameras, what at the time were cheap (in the West) and popular Zenith EM and Praktica MTL SLRs, were still reliant upon the old M42 screw mount for their lenses, whilst the ranks of Japanese companies had all swapped to the much easier to use bayonet mounts of assorted patterns. On the compact front, there was simply nothing to compete with the mass of smaller, cheaper cameras available from numerous manufacturers.
Now, what you may ask, does the Cosina CX-2 and its very similar CX-1 sibling have to do with this? Compare the CX-2 to the Lomo LC-A, and it’s obvious! The Leningrad Optical Mechanical Association, hence LOMO, were instructed to produce a camera so close in design to the CX-2, that it’s hard not to do a double take. The full story is here: Lomography.com
Production of the original LC-A may have ended in 1994, but the story doesn’t stop there and the resurgence in popularity of film and analog photography has in no doubt been aided by a group of Austrian enthusiasts who persuaded LOMO to restart production. Now, as well as being a business name, Lomography has become a term to describe taking spontaneous photos with little consideration of technical details, often with coloured streaks from light leaks especially using plastic or toy cameras, blurry images from poor quality lenses and generally images for their art and the look, not technical excellence. The current iteration of the LC-A is a special 30th anniversary edition, called the LC-Wide, which has an equally special £359 price tag.
Cosina, along with the likes of Chinon, Ricoh, Kyocera, Miranda and a couple more formed part of the second level in a strange hierarchy amongst Japanese camera companies. They sat below the Goliath like twins of Canon and Nikon, who dominated the professional film market, who, along with Olympus, Pentax, Fujica and Minolta, slugged it out for the wallets of photographers with no need or desire for a camera able to survive a war zone. Dig a little deeper and you find that alongside their own range of SLRs like the CT-1, Cosina at times also made budget model cameras for the “big boys”, both Olympus (OM2000) and Nikon (FM10) using the company for this, along with Cosina producing numerous lenses for other brands.
The CX-2 here was purchased as a “spares or repair”, and it represents a slightly sterner test of my skills than the compacts and SLRs that preceded it, as well as a bit of a gamble. As the photos might show, there’s a touch of rust to resolve, more chipped paint than usual and crucially, corrosion on the battery terminal. I’ve shied away from cameras with this before, as the corrosion is the gamble; it’s the toughest bit to rectify. The often green or blue residue eventually is left by leaking alkaline cells as it reacts with the metal of the battery contacts, which if severe enough, can result in any metal remaining being so delicate, renovation is impossible. Being spring steel, the contacts tend to be a little thin in the first place, hence they have a nasty habit of breaking off if you apply excess pressure whilst scraping the surface!
The first course of action then was an assault on the battery terminal to see if the camera actually worked. Not much point doing anything after that if it didn’t, save turning it into a paperweight maybe.
After making enquiries and raiding the kitchen cupboards, I assembled the requisite ingredients for battery terminal corrosion treatment; a mildly gritty and slightly acidic concoction made up of baking soda and white vinegar. Carefully applied to the metal of the contacts and in this case the battery cap, as well as a wipe around the screw threads, the mixture will gently fizz a little at first, and you leave the contacts to stew for a while. Alkaline salts duly neutralised, careful scraping of the residue hopefully reveals clean (enough) metal, preferably sufficient electrical conductivity to work.
The moment of truth….add a pair of SR44 cells and hope for the best.
Film advance wheel duly swiped to cock the shutter and press….Click. Result!
A little green battery check LED appeared in the viewfinder on first pressure, continue pressing and the shutter fired. A few more tests to see if varying amounts of light make a discernible difference to the shutter speed and short of putting a film through later, I think we have a worker. Next step, the rest of it.
The rust maybe wasn’t as bad as first thought, the brown colouration departed with what remained of the light seals, though the paint surface that was left behind was bubbly, a good indication of corrosion underneath. Some deeper than usual cleaning left me with a suitable surface to paint, mainly to protect the metal from atmospheric moisture. I can then add new foam which I’ll have to cut from a sheet or utilise spare pre-cut strips for the groove on the top of the film housing; there’s a distinct lack of readily available pre-cut seals for the CX-2.
As for the rest of the camera body, aside from the paintwork on the film door, it just needed a good clean, though when I started doing that, I also started contemplating replacing the normal black covering with something rather more colourful. Again, this would have to be custom cut by myself from a sheet of material, using the (hopefully in one piece) old covering as a template. I’m still undecided on this, as the original covering is actually in decent condition.
Unlike the Chinon Bellami I did the other week, the strap on the CX-2 easily detaches, which gets it out of the way when cleaning. Sadly though, despite the bottom of the camera body coming off easily enough, the hinge pin for the film door wouldn’t budge, as with that detached it would have been much easier when trying to get rid of the seals and dodgy paintwork, without threatening the film housing or shutter. I’ll just have to be careful.
Much like Olympus and Chinon, Cosina also made a dedicated flash unit for the CX-1 and -2, the CX-11 Auto-Flash, which when fitted, hangs to the left of the hot shoe and over the film rewind lever, leaving the shutter release button and rewind wheel areas unhindered. Although designed to match the CX body, the flash unit is a standard centre contact hot shoe mount, so any small flash will suffice should I wish to fit one.
Oddly though for a compact camera, the full CX kit also included a motor drive unit, secured to the base via the tripod bush, with two electrical contacts to the right of the tripod bush mating with reciprocal contacts on the winder. This is triggered when you take a photo and drive is applied to the slotted screw seen in the image above to advance the film to the next frame, usually accompanied by more noise than you’d expect can generated in a box contacting a small 3v electric motor and a few gears.
Needless to say I won’t be pursuing the purchase of the CX-11 or the motor drive. Time and scarcity have happily driven prices to the ridiculous for both, I’ve seen £85 for a motor drive, and the only advert I can find on eBay for a full set of camera, flash and winder is £450 in the US.
What I hadn’t noticed when I bought the camera though, was a missing control! Look at the image of the front of the camera above, under the aperture control slider, which strangely only works with flash (very weird!), you’ll notice an oval sort of fitting, this is where the self timer lever should be. Deft use of a pair of pliers confirmed it worked, but the chances of finding a replacement are nigh on zero, short of buying a complete but total non-worker and nicking it off that. Sadly the cheap CX-1 on eBay I found can’t be used as as a donor, one difference between the two was the CX-2 had a self timer…Grrrrr. Consequently, with an eye on the shape of the mounting and the distance between there and the camera base, I took a punt on a lever off a Pentax ME/ME Super in the hope of fitting that, if only to look complete. Stay tuned to find out if I’ve wasted my money, again.