Topic: cleaning old cameras

[This-is-damion]

Hello,   just bagged a new Polaroid land camera from ebay.

it stinks!  and not in that good old camera kind of way,  just stale smoke  and seeing as how ive been smoke free 2 yrs now, its not nice!

any idea how to freshen that bad boy up?

[Francois]

I've had the same problem with an Argus C-3
But mine had a bad damp, musty and rank basement smell. The worse I'd ever smelled, but the camera was cheap.

The problem with cameras is that you "stick them under your nose" for every picture 

I did resort to something drastic... I'll see next spring if it worked but I'm confident (right now, it's airing out in the attic).
I sprayed the camera inside and out with Lysol. I put a piece of scrunched up paper towel in front of the lens and sprayed away. The stuff is supposed to kill 99.9% of bacteria and viruses if you leave it there for 1 minute. So I figured it should do the job with all the tiny details on this brick. The leatherette did suffer quite a bit... but I was ready to pay that price.

But a tip first: wear gloves at least on the hand that holds the camera! I had burning skin for hours after the job was done... probably due to the Ethyl Alcohol in the stuff.

Also, another tip: don't use the baby fresh scent! I'm still trying to get it out of the camera  and it's strong enough to make your stomach turn! I should have used the Original smell version as it's probably not as though to get rid of.

If you find some other trick, let me know... we never know when it's going to be useful.

By the way, congrats on the 2 year anniversary! Keep on going.

[Susan B.]

it stinks!  and not in that good old camera kind of way,  just stale smoke  and seeing as how ive been smoke free 2 yrs now, its not nice!

any idea how to freshen that bad boy up?

Sorry D, but you have me rolling with laughter across the pond.

I landed a super stanky sx70 on ebay once.
I cleaned it up, but nothing seemed to help.
I sprayed the outside with Ozium, let it sit for a day then gave it another good clean.
Smelled a tad better, but it never lost that faint foul residue of odor.
So I put it in a box with one of those hanging lemon car air freshners for a week.
It just ended up smelling like moldy, lemon smoke.
Maybe I should have used the New Car smell instead.
So I did what I had to do...
sold that stanky thang off on ebay.
Didn't seem to bother the new owner.

Hope yours works out better than mine.

[This-is-damion]

eek!  doesnt sound promising,  will give it a whirl anyway. what makes it worse is that i got it mixed up for the 360 version,  (glass lens & tripd mount0 but its actually just the plastic lens no tripod mount version,  so might sell it anyway.

although im sure ed prefers the plastic ones so will give it a trial run.

[Francois]

If you just don't want to smell it during use, tape a sheet of fabric static sheets for the dryer on the back

[Skorj]

Being the Skip I am, I wipe my smelly objects with eucalyptus oil. Actually, I use that for everything... Chips taste better fried in it, I get more km to the liter, the cat likes it for breakfast on dried crunchy food,  you name it.