“This camera doesn’t use batteries,” is what a young man working at a Brooklyn vintage store told me one day when I inquired about a Polaroid Land Camera they had. I can still hear his voice and the disbelief when I opened up the compartment to reveal heartbreak — aka, battery corrosion due to someone leaving the batteries in their camera. Don’t be misled. You can often avoid these problems by buying vintage cameras from reputable resellers. But sometimes, you can find the best things at a garage sale. So, if you get a camera with battery corrosion, here’s how to fix it in a quick, step-by-step method.
What You Need to Clean Battery Corrosion
Here’s what we recommend that you get to clean the battery corrosion on the vintage camera:
- Isopropyl Alcohol: highly recommended by various camera cleaning crews all over the world. We’re going to be using a fair amount of this. But either way, it’s good to have for cleaning electronics like cameras, lenses, etc. We’ve got a lot of tutorials on how to clean your camera lens and autofocus contacts with isopropyl alcohol here.
- Q-Tips or Cotton Swabs: these are needed for the application process. They’re textured, gentle, and handy enough for this entire cleaning tutorial.
- Rubber gloves: You’re messing around with dried-up battery acid. I’d even wear a mask, to be honest, but some might consider that overkill.
- Baking Soda and White Vinegar: These two are gentle but effective enough at creating enough oxygen for this exorcism process. And let’s be honest, it’s more or less an exorcism process. Feel free to say, “The power of Christ compels you!”
- A clean towel: Basically, just to clean things off.
And it should go without saying, but I’d also do this on a clean surface of some sort.
Step by Step
Now, here’s how to clean the battery corrosion from your vintage camera:
- Open up the battery door. Using a flashlight, identify where exactly the corrosion is. It usually looks like rust — and not the aesthetically pretty kind that they like to incorporate into modern architecture.
- Apply some isopropyl alcohol to a cotton swab and then start gently but thoroughly cleaning the affected areas. Springs might be a bit tougher to clean. But those aren’t super duper important to worry about.
- After getting as much of the battery corrosion off as you can, add a bit of baking soda to the areas. Then, apply some vinegar to a new, clean cotton swab. Try dripping it onto the baking soda. Only use a bit. If you dowse it in vinegar, you might completely destroy the internals.
- Clean it all off using the towel.
- Give it another pass with isopropyl alcohol.
- Let it dry, but also gently pat it down
Within a few hours, it should all dry up. If you’re not satisfied with the job you did, repeat it.
Enjoy Your Camera
After all this, you have to figure out what batteries your camera uses. And that information can easily be found online and fact-checked with multiple sources who say the same thing. After that, you can buy the batteries and get to use your camera. If it still doesn’t work, the problem is beyond the battery corrosion. But if you’re buying it from a garage sale, you’ve hopefully gotten the camera for a really cheap price.