Konica Auto S3 battery holder repair
I was in the middle of shooting a roll of Ultrafine Colouruption film which I received from Photo Warehouse when my Konica Auto S3 stopped working. Despite my disappointment I wasn’t going to waste a roll of film so I rewound it and loaded it into my Fuji half frame Fujica Drive but that will be another story. Back to my now dead Konica S3. The S3 has an electronic shutter so will not operate without batteries or in this case power (There were fresh batteries in it). I suspected that it was the battery holder primarily because of that lack of power. The first order of business was to remove the bottom plate which is held in place with just 3 screws.
While there is evidence of a little bit of corrosion it doesn’t look too bad so I need to go deeper and remove the holder itself.
And now its pretty clear what’s happened. One of the battery cables has come completely off with all the corrosion that was hidden underneath.
Next I cleaned all the corrosion off and prepared to solder a new piece of wire to the end of the existing lead.
What a struggle it was to get the solder to adhere to the battery tab. In the image above you can see that the solder has formed a little blob around the cable. This is not a sufficient connection. After more flux and frustration I finally managed to get a good solder joint and put it back together.
And now I have my Konica Auto S3 back and working. Its such a joy to use I’m looking forward to putting some more film through it.
One thing about one camera: The Konica Auto S3 was claimed to have the first built in daylight flash synchronization. With the Konica X-20 flash mounted you would line up the flash needle with the exposure needle and the light would be balanced.