2026-07-24 Ansco Lancer Repair

    When I collected this Ansco Lancer it had two problems. It has two shutter speeds. The slower of the two was acting like a “B” and staying open as long as you held the shutter down. The second problem was the light meter wasn’t working.
    After cleaning the camera up as much as I could (using a wet cotton swab and then polishing with a dry swab) I developed a plan of attack.

    The steps would be—
1) Remove the lens structure from the camera body

• This involves taking out three slot-head screws
• Then taking off the entire front of the camera—lens and two waterhouse stops

2) Examine the shutter assembly to see if there was an identifiable problem.

There didn’t seem to be a problem—like a spring missing—except one part didn’t seem to move freely. I decided to apply some lighter fluid—outside the house of course—and work the shutter until it moved freely. Once I had it working I placed the camera on a forced air heating grate (it was in winter then) to dry the lighter fluid away while I took a look at the lens. 
    

    The lens seemed cloudy, which was curious, so I decided to take it apart. It seemed to have a pair of locking screws fixing the front element of the lens to the back element. I placed the front element in the infinity position, loosened the set screws and then unthreaded the front element. Strangely there didn’t appear to be anything on any of the glass surfaces and the cloudiness disappeared. I screwed the front element back in place and retightened the set screws.
    By this time I was pretty sure any lighter fluid stuck in the shutter assembly would have been dried off by the forced hot air. I lined up the three slot head holes—it is pretty easy as the front you are attaching has printing on that makes the front’s orientation obvious—and screwed the front in place. The shutter speeds were still working and the focus positions still worked.
    

    So it was time to attempt to fix the light meter. The Lancer—a German camera made for Ansco by Bilora in 1959—had been introduced without a light meter. This improved model—introduced a year later in 1960—is the Lancer LG (not labelled as such on the camera). The Selenium meter was made in Japan, and screws on to two holes drilled in the camera body. There is no connection between the light meter and the camera. The lightmeter has just four markings
At the lowest reading the scale says “flash”
Next up says Caution—how you interpret that must be in the instruction manual
Then the Sunny scale is split in two—Hazy and Bright
    

    Happily the only two shutter speeds are labelled as Hazy (50 and the flash lightening bolt symbol) and Bright (100). 

    There are also two f/stop settings.They are labelled B&W—f/16 and color—f/8—so evidently you used the f/stop the film required. 
    Back to the meter repair. Once off the camera, there are three screws clustered together under the meter, but removing the three (one long, two short) does not allow access to the meter movement. There is a fourth screw located a ways away from the others that has a split blade head that none of my screwdrivers would work on. I could have taken a perfectly good bladed screwdriver and cut a section of the middle of the blade out, but instead gave up. The light meter’s needle was still free to move, but in my experience it is generally the selenium cell’s ground that has failed. That might be fixable by reheating the connection, but I have never tried and fear the results.
    So I re-attached the meter to the camera.
    

    I took a look at the Ansco Flash VIa. It is a capacitor flash that took a long 22½ VDC battery (still available!). The flash took M-2 flashbulbs (it could also take M-5 and M-3 bulbs, but they might not be available at that time) and seems well made.
    The Ansco Lancer LG came in a kit with film, flash and four flashbulbs for $25. You could get a $1-off coupon to make the set even cheaper. There is even a B&W 60-second commercial for this camera on the internet. You can download the commercial or if you prefer, download the script. The commercial is 5 M and the text much smaller.
    

    The Ansco Lancer camera is a very interesting camera for its mixture of design and engineering, Take the back for example. The small red window used for B&W film needed to be used for color film too. I metal cover was added so the film wouldn’t get light struck from behind. To keep the design consistent the back release above the small metal frame window also has a slide action. As shown it is locked, but slid to the right opens both the film window and—when moved further—the back.

    

    In this image the inside of the back is shown above the inside of the camera. Note the cutout in the film’s backing plate so the frame markings can be seen on the roll film’s backing paper. The film path is straight across the frame. The feed film would be placed on the right—where the empty spool is now—as the advance wheel is on the left. The camera can not double expose as the shutter has to be cocked by advancing the film.