Camera Cleaning

Nikomat was the Japanese Market name for the Nikkormat, which was Nikon's non-professional line from the late 1960s up to the advent of the Nikon FM in 1977. The meter on the FT2 version takes a common LR44 battery which is something that I wanted. I bought this Nikomat FT2 from a seller in Japan. I was curious about this quirky camera and wanted to get familiar with manually indexing pre-ai lenses. Some of the Nikomat/Nikkormat's useful quirks are a small window on the top plate with an analog meter reading and a shutter speed ring behind the lens which allows the photographer to change shutter speed without taking their eye off the viewfinder. This was a heavy duty camera that retains all of Nikon's legendary build quality.

The inside of the viewfinder of this example had a lot of large dark specs inside. The culprit turned out to be the window on the top plate with the meter reading. This window has a light seal which degraded and a lot of loose fuzz had gotten in between the prism and the focusing screen. I found videos on how to take this camera apart. This project was a learning experience. One of the things that I learned was that I needed Japanese Industrial Standard screwdrivers because Phillips heads will not work on these screws. I could took off the top plate and pulled out the prism. I blew everything out really well, then I put fresh light seal material around the window. There was also a heavy musty smell coming from the leatherette wrapping, so I got some new custom leather wraps for the camera.