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Carl Mastandrea wrote the following about his background and what to expect from his presentation.

Camera repair is not for the faint of heart. It takes a fair amount of patience, a set of particular tools, a good memory, and excellent eyesight. And above all, access to Google.

I have been fixing things since I was a teenager and found that I had a natural talent for it. The very first machine I took apart was an old Victrola (a wind-up record player). I was 12. It didn’t take me long to figure out the problem: the main barrel spring, which was caked in grease, was broken. It took me much longer to figure out a solution. Remember, this was before Google, where you can look up any repair, or Amazon, where you can order any part.

Another important element to any repair is making a fair and reasonable assessment of whether you can afford to fail at the repair. In this case, the Victrola was already broken—I had nothing to lose. But if you are thinking about repairing a piece of your own equipment, you have to be very clear-eyed about the potential consequences.

And yes, much to my father’s amazement, I fixed the Victrola.

I moved on from making a mess of things in my parents’ house to starting and building a darkroom in rental facilities in Jamaica Plain in the ’90s. We had both black-and-white and color darkrooms, with ten enlargers in each. From there, I started taking care of many of the darkrooms at Boston-area high schools and colleges. I began repairing enlargers, timers, easels, cameras, and lenses. Needless to say, my repair skills came in very handy during that time. Also needless to say, my vast knowledge of darkroom equipment repair is fairly useless at this point.

The main lesson I’ve learned in my career is that most mechanical machines are easily fixable. The key is trying. The problem almost always presents itself, and with the aid of Google videos, the solution is readily available. But then you have to ask yourself two questions: Can I do this? Is it worth it?

The repairs I do today are only on pre-digital cameras and lenses. Fixing the electronics in a digital camera is often not cost-effective—and it’s far less fun to me.

For this presentation, I will be going over basic cleaning and repair, as well as my other favorite pastime: refurbishing antique cameras. I will show you the basic set-up you’ll need, along with the tools required to do most repairs. I’ll share whatever tricks I know, and I’m also happy to answer any questions.

In addition to repairing cameras, I’m also an active photographer, and I shoot every day.