This camera was my grandmother's before it was mine. She bought it back in the early 1970's and I bought my TL Electro-X after having tried it. My main experience with SLRs prior to this had been with my father's Zeiss Contaflex Alpha and a Bessler Topcon which I eventually gave away to a cousin.
My grandmother used this for about 7 or 8 years then when it developed its present shutter problem she retired it to a closet where it sat for about 15 years until I inherited it after she died. From what I've read I don't think the shutter problem is all that serious to fix but I don't have enough confidence in my repair ability yet to open up an heirloom.
Of these models I have it's most like the TL-E: cloth curtain shutter, no mirror lockup feature, LED exposure meter, depth of field preview on the meter switch, which pops back up after tripping the shutter. It seems to be the only one of the bunch to manage 1/1000 second with a cloth shutter.
The lens shown on it here is an f/2.8 135mm Suntar which she bought with it. The lens works fine.
Batteries: It seems like most TL Electros use a pair of PX640 cells
stacked. However it seems that some might take a single PX-28. It
will be one or the other and fortunately there's an easy way to tell, based
on the diameter of the battery compartment. Here's a simple method: Take a common
AA cell and see if it fits into the hole at all. If it does, use a pair of PX640s.
If it doesn't, use a PX28. The AA cell is between the diameter of the two, and if it
will start to fit into the hole, then the hole diameter is one that fits the PX640.
If the hole diameter is smaller, then use the PX28. Two PX640's stacked are the same
height as a PX28, but the PX28 gives twice the voltage.
Assembling Charts for this camera
