Expert: John Oliverio - 1/17/2009

Question
Hello John from Wales, UK. A neighbour asked me to look at their Braun Trend Zoom 105, early 1990's I guess.
As the film chamber is on the right when back is open, I'm guessing it uses the pre-winding system so that shots exposed are back into the cassette. Am I right on this? Batteries are fine but when the back is closed it winds on to the take-up spool for justa couple of seconds, a few frames length.
Pressing the emergency unload button works, taking the film back into the cassette. I've tried using a dud film to test the loading & am assuming a sensor problem or loss of operating memory to instruct full winding at loading.

Answer
Andrew,

 Hello....  you're my first question from Wales.  Thank you!

 Well, the position of the film can doesn't really have anything to do with whether the camera is a pre-loader or not.  My guess is it is not.  The majority of the cameras that were made to do that were put out by Fujifilm.  And I don't recall Fuji building cameras for any aftermarket dist. companies like Braun.  I'm  thinking that when you load and it goes just those few frames that it is actually loaded and ready to go.  One indication is the frame counter...  does it go to (1)?  Also, a common problem is pushing to much or not enough film over the take up spool.  It doesn't take much.  Just enough that the tip of the film slightly overhangs the curve of the spool.

Hope this helps.

John