Viewer repair?

[non834]

I have two broken viewers on my hands. One is mine and cost me twenty dollars, and has no bulb, so I'm either going to toss it or give it away. The other cost over a hundred dollars and isn't mine, so it either has to be replaced or repaired. Does anyone know a place that can repair viewers? The one in question is a Vernon 101 dual 8. The problem is that it has an unusual amount of tension in the sprocket wheels, so much so that if I try to pull film through it, it will tear the sprocket holes. I can still turn them by hand however. It's funny, because the same problem occured with my other viewer, which is also a vernon. Funny? Anyway, any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

-charles

[woods01]

When they were functional how well did they work?
My editor-viewer is a piece of junk. Even with
all the lights off the image is very very faint.
Not really practical for use at all. Which is
too bad because I had shot my first few rolls
of k40 with the idea of being able to edit and
project them. Mine is a Hanimex dual 8.

[Hanthx]

Vernon 101's are cheap. I bought one a few years ago for 5 bucks in the box. Very faint image during the day and a decent image at night. I got rid of quickly.

Look for better viewers on ebay.
The Minette S-5 is the cream of the crop. You can find one as low as $15. Produce a crisp picture in broad daylight.

Goko's are nice too but most people know the name therefore the price of them can be higher.

So what am I saying?
It will probably cost you more to repair it rather than buy another one.

Scott

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ November 26, 2002 04:28 PM: Message edited by: Hanthx ]</font>

[Colorburst300]

My viewer sucks too.

The only thing that's good about it is that the tension is not tight, and that's because I carefully lubricated the inside of the cartridge (around the sprocket wheel) with some silicone lubricant. I own a Keystone dual-8 Editor

But I agree with Woods01; the image on the viewer is garbage and it never lines up good enough to make an edit splice, so I've never even risked cutting my film apart. Also the guides that have little rollers on them never roll properly so they do scratch the film, more so than any projector will. I won't lubricate them because I don't want any silicone coming off on the film, so I basically don't even use the viewer.

But in respect to the original post, those things should be a joke to fix, unless you already plan on buying another one because they're very cheap. The mechanics of a viewer/editor are very simple, it's just that if things are thrown off you're going to get a lousy picture and those sprocket wheels can tear the holes of the film.

In this day of computer editing, I see no use for my viewer. It acts as a set of rewinds in my studio. I prefer to just transfer my film to miniDV while it still looks pretty good instead of running it through the editor and scratching it up when that was totally unnecessary.

~M