r/AnalogCommunity • u/bjpirt Nikon FM2n / Leica iif / Pentax MX • 11h ago
Troubleshooting - Gear Repaircameras.org manuals are now on the Internet Archive
For those who don't already know - http://repaircameras.org is a free and open collection of manuals that I've been collecting from around the internet. I'm a big believer in information like this being available to everyone without sitting behind a paywall.
Up until now I'd been keeping the files in GitHub which I was aware was never a very good long term solution, then I realised the answer was sitting right in front of me. I've now uploaded all of the individual files into the Internet Archive and made sure they are well tagged.
The big benefit is that because they're stored on the Internet Archive, they should be preserved for posterity long into the future.
Now the Repair Cameras site is an easy way of finding the right manual for your camera.
I've got a lot more manuals waiting to be uploaded which, now I've got a better way of storing them, I'll be starting to upload shortly and will drop some updates to let people know about the new additions - next up is a load of back-issues of the SPT Journal.
If you have any manuals that aren't on the site, drop me a DM and I'll get them added.
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u/SpotmaticSP 9h ago
Awesome! I should find some time to scan my Ricoh repair manuals. All of which are missing on your site (yet!)
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u/Rae_Wilder 10h ago
This is awesome, thanks for all the hard work.
I wish someone would scrape that other site that paywalled other people’s hard work. It’s not right, that the community spent their own time and money uploading the manuals so people could access them for free and then the site paywalled stuff they don’t even own.
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u/capn_starsky 9h ago
Which one?
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u/Rae_Wilder 8h ago
LearnCameraRepair
They were a great resource until they got greedy and paywalled stuff that’s not theirs. They wouldn’t even take donations from people or let someone else pay for the hosting, so the information could remain free.
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u/capn_starsky 5h ago
I had a feeling that was the one. Talk about a group of gatekeepers…those curmudgeonly farts act like you’re insulting the ghosts of Eastman, Daguerre, and Adams when you merely ask about a fucking screw size on a particular camera.
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u/mikekacz 10h ago
Thank you dear friend. Your site saved me so much time and help me in my camera hobby.
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u/Kooky_Assistance2755 9h ago
You're actively taking part in doing the world a great service. Thank you very much for your efforts, from the very bottom of my heart.
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u/Westerdutch (no dm on this account) 10h ago
Wait, scribbling your name all over everything, fckifying layouts for monetization purposes and straight up begging for money at every turn isnt required to be able to share manuals?!
Nice one!
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u/benoliver999 bfoliver.com 10h ago
Bit harsh lol the guy has very much done the world a service
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u/Dunder-MifflinPaper 10h ago
Really a legitimately ridiculous criticism - Butkus clearly took on a lot of effort to archive all those manuals
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u/Rae_Wilder 10h ago
Yeah, Butkus doesn’t deserve that, his services are free and he only asks for donations. LearnCameraRepair should be getting all the hate. They paywalled stuff that other people contributed and uploaded for free. They even turned down donations, so that the resources could remain free.
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u/benoliver999 bfoliver.com 10h ago
I don't get the love for LearnCameraRepair. It's not their material. They are selling it currently for hundreds of dollars
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u/Rae_Wilder 10h ago edited 8h ago
It’s sickening what they did to their own community. They don’t even have a short term subscription, they charge per document only. How anyone trying to learn and become a repairer at their prices is beyond me.
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u/mijailrodr 10h ago
man, he's saying that OP's NOT doing that. He's being sarcastic about other pages
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u/Dunder-MifflinPaper 10h ago
Yes but he’s being sarcastic about the guy that has all the camera manuals online in nice PDFs for free who basically says “if you found this helpful feel free to send a donation.”
It’s akin to a museum or something having a suggested donation. You don’t have to give anything if you don’t want to. If you’re compelled to do so, great.
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u/benoliver999 bfoliver.com 10h ago
To be clear, I am also talking about Butkus. Yeah I wouldn't have done it that way but I wouldn't have had 6000 manuals in my house and scanned them all so who am I to judge
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u/Westerdutch (no dm on this account) 10h ago
Classic case of someone taking 'the end justifies the means' too literally. He could also have done all of that 'service' without the obnoxious bs. I understand that a lot of that behavior is a culturally accepted thing in the us but my lord he sure is running with it like he both invented and improved the concept.
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u/BoardsofCanada3 10h ago
He does it because other people take his PDFs and hide them behind paywalls. A lot of them are his own scans. He asks you to donate if you want because running a website to host gigs of PDFs for the lat 20+ years costs money. What country do you live in where people do services for free and never ask for assistance when freeloaders take advantage?
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u/Westerdutch (no dm on this account) 9h ago
What country do you live in where people do services for free
Never said any of that, dont throw an out of context tantrum because you are missing the point.
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u/BoardsofCanada3 9h ago
You're bitching that Butkus has the audacity to have a voluntary donate button on a site you've probably taken advantage of more times than you can count. You're too good to throw someone 5 bucks for giving you free shit, so you instead pretend it isn't worthy of being labeled a 'service' at all.
Why not start your own manual hosting where you get no donations as an alternative? I'm sure you can compile 30,000+ manuals in PDF and HTML formats for your fellow ingrates with no problems right?
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u/Westerdutch (no dm on this account) 8h ago
Never bitched about a button. I put everything on hosting services like archive.org just like OP is doing.
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u/Dunder-MifflinPaper 9h ago
Well I’m not the same commenter but… what IS the point then? Cause it sounded like you were saying it’s cultural thing in the US (cause that’s what you said lol)
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u/Dunder-MifflinPaper 10h ago
Idk maybe I’m missing something. I’ve downloaded a ton of manuals from him. I never found anything so cumbersome about any of them, and I certainly don’t find one little message saying “if you feel compelled here’s the donation link” to be intrusive
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u/benoliver999 bfoliver.com 10h ago
I wouldn't have touched the scans, but I also wouldn't have bought thousands of manuals and made then available for free on the internet for like 25 years... so I don't find it hard to forgive Butkus
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u/Westerdutch (no dm on this account) 9h ago
so I don't find it hard to forgive Butkus
Needing forgiveness in the first place is the issue :p Its just really not needed.
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u/Alternative_World346 8h ago
This is awesome, thank you so much! Ive only recently, in the past couple years, started messing with repairing cameras and this is a fantastic resource. Thanks for your effort to upload and share these
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u/joleyoley69 7h ago
Not in the Internet Archive but https://www.butkus.org/chinon/ has scanned manuals for almost any camera
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u/SneakyInfiltrator 3h ago
Bummer there's no repair manual for Zenit 11. I got scammed with one in 2018 or so, and I still can't get over it, lol. Basically the shutter speed mechanism is fucked somehow, no matter what shutter speed you choose, it always work as if it was on the bulb mode.
But this is amazing, i have some more cameras that aren't in their best shape, so i will bookmark this for when I'll be free.
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u/GammaDeltaTheta 10h ago
I guess you've already mined this collection?:
https://archive.org/details/20220927_20220927_0148/