I built myself a power grip for the 67. I have never heard about any project like this so I thought I pass on my experiences - maybe someone wants to do something similar.

1. I took the 67 wooden handle and unassembled it. 2. the metal caps (top&bottom) come off nicely and you end up with a bare pice of wood. 3. drilled a hole in the middle (at the long side - from cap to cap) about 15 centimeters wide 4. stuffed the hole with 5 Nicd cells. Each cell is about 1.5 cm long and has 1.2 V. 5. drilled a tiny hole into the wood and the lower cap at the location where the metal connectors from the camera body meet the cap. There the power wire runs completely hidden to the camera body.

So far, nothing of the modification can be seen. Even at close inspection there is nothing to be found.

Here the problems start: How do I get the power into the body ?

Solution1: I bought a used external battery adaptor - cut the battery pack off and wired it to the NiCd cells in the handle. This allowed me to test the setup in real life without any body modifications. Results are: works like a charm. Meter is not off. (Crosstested with the old battery). Cell capacity is fine. Selfdischarge of the cells is not an issue. I stuffed the camera for 6 months into its bag - took it out and shoot 8 rolls of film and the battery indicator is still happy (without charging :-) ). There is only one problem : The wire of the external battery adaptor is in the way when you want to mount the camera on a tripod.

Solution2: to avoid that I plan to build a metal plate the exactly fits the bottom of the body (something remotely similar to the really right stuff plate) where I can cut a channel into the metal for the wire.

happy shooting, schnuff

-- schnuff (na*nospam*se@epost.de), April 20, 2001