My LOMO LC-A has had problems intermittently on the tail-end of the roll. It takes more and more effort to wind the film on, then at frame 18 or so the mechanism slips. It happened again so I shorted the roll and opened it up. It seems the take-up reel has cracked in a couple of places, and it wasn’t turning. I was able to free up the mechanism, but it’s still a little wonky. 20-year old Soviet-era plastic can’t be expected to last forever – as it is, it’s still going after 100+ rolls!

I took my Vivitar IC 100, the newest $1.00 camera in the family out for a test roll and noticed that the winder was an odd retrograde design. The guide sprockets rotate left to right, then the take up reel rotates counterclockwise. It jammed at frame 16, and I had to take the camera into a dark closet, open the back and manually feed the film back into the case. I could feel the sprockets had shredded at some point on the roll.