I was fixing a beat up Nikon F2 at a swap meet in Portland last spring. An older guy sits down next to me and says, 'you know those shutter speeds are just springs wearing out, right?' He then showed me how the spring tension changes after 40 years of use. Took me about 20 minutes to adjust the main spring following his method. Has anyone else had a random stranger drop some repair wisdom on you like that?
Tbh I spent like two years hand scrubbing fungus off old glass with alcohol and q-tips, always worried about scratching the coatings. Then I grabbed a used Branson 2800 from a dental supply shop for $120 and tried it on a dirty 50mm f/1.4 from the 70s. The difference was night and day the ultrasonic got into the tiny gaps between the elements where my q-tip couldn't reach. I used a simple mix of distilled water and a drop of dish soap, ran it for 5 minutes at 40 degrees C. No streaks, no scratches, no residue left behind. Has anyone else had trouble with certain coatings coming off in the tank versus hand cleaning? I still hand wipe the outer surfaces after but for the inner groups it's a no brainer now.
I was in Cleveland last week visiting a buddy and we stopped into this old camera shop downtown. The guy behind the counter had six cameras taken apart on his bench with no labels or trays, just parts piled together. I asked him how he keeps track of which screw goes where and he said he just remembers. That might work for him but it made me wonder how many times he ends up with leftover parts. Has anyone else seen repair setups that make you cringe?
Guy at a swap meet in Phoenix, must have been 70, warned me off using heat guns on Pentax Spotmatic shutters. Said the curtain material gets brittle. I thought he was just being old school. Last month I grabbed a Spotmatic with sticky shutter blades, got impatient, and hit it with a low setting for maybe 30 seconds. The curtain literally crinkled up and tore on the next cock. Ruined the whole repair. Cost me a $40 parts camera to fix my mistake. Now I wait overnight with a hair dryer on the lowest setting. Anyone else had a quick heat method backfire on them?
Saw a Canon A-1 come in with a shutter button that wouldn't depress. Thought it was a simple clean. Took me 4 hours to find a tiny piece of broken plastic jammed under the release magnet that I had to fish out with tweezers. Anyone else spend way too long on what should have been a quick fix?
Last Tuesday alone I had three K1000s come in with dead meters and sticky shutters, and each one only needed a clean and fresh batteries to get shooting again. Is it just me or do those old things sometimes just decide to cooperate for no good reason?
I was in my garage last Tuesday working on a Canon AE-1 from the 70s, just replacing the light seals like I've done a hundred times. Grabbed some generic foam off Amazon cause I was out of my usual precut kit. Finished up, loaded some Portra 400, and handed it to a buddy for a weekend shoot. He came back with the whole roll fogged along the back edge, every single frame. Turns out that cheap foam I used was too thick and wasn't compressing right against the film door. Spent about 3 hours sanding it down and testing with a flashlight before it sealed proper. Anyone else run into bad foam ruining a seal job?
I always thought he was crazy but after trying it on a sticky leaf shutter from a 1960s Voigtlander last week, it worked like magic and blew my mind, anyone else got a weird fix they were skeptical about?
I had a Pentax K1000 in my shop last week that had a shutter stuck open at 1/1000. I was about to tear the whole thing down to clean the blades because every trick I tried - compressed air, tiny brush, even a static charge - did nothing. Then an old guy at the camera club in Tulsa mentioned he uses Ronsonol on stubborn oil residue. I was skeptical lol, but I dabbed a tiny bit on a cotton swab and touched just the edge of the blade pivot. After letting it dry 10 minutes, the shutter snapped back like new. Anyone else ever tried lighter fluid for shutter cleaning or is that just a cowboy move? I feel like it could warp something long term.
He said I was blasting dust deeper into the gears and since I switched to a soft brush and vacuum method my shutter cleanings have lasted over 6 months longer on average, anyone else had a repair shop guru change their basic habits?
Last month I had three Sony A7 series cameras come through with those thin plastic sensor cover films scratched up from people trying to clean them with dry cloths, has anyone else seen this spike in the shop?
I had this old Nikkor 105mm f2.5 that was getting stiff near the macro end. Took the whole helicoid apart and ran a test with two different greases on separate sections. The lithium grease felt smooth at first but got gummy after maybe 50 turns. The carbon grease from Micro-Tools stayed consistent the whole time and didn't change with temperature. I ended up scraping all the lithium off and just using carbon throughout. Has anyone else noticed a big difference between grease types on helical focusing threads?
I always used a hair dryer on low, took forever and the glue still fought me. Picked up a cheap Wagner heat gun at a garage sale for 8 bucks and it peeled that fake leather off my SRT-101 in under 5 minutes without scorching the metal. Anyone else make the switch and notice a huge time difference?
I thought it was just hype for years, but after I wrecked a shutter curtain on a Pentax 67 with isopropyl alcohol alone I finally bought a $200 ultrasonic from Amazon. Three minutes in the bath with the right solution and that shutter was spotless, no damage at all. Anybody else had good results with ultrasonic on older leaf shutters?
He said I was ruining shutters by using isopropyl alcohol because it strips the lubrication over time. He swore by naphtha lighter fluid for years. Tried it on a sticky Copal shutter yesterday and it worked way better. Anyone else use something weird for cleaning?
The guy said he stopped taking in anything with a leaf shutter because people refused to pay more than $50 for the repair, and honestly after rebuilding my third Compur shutter in a row I'm starting to see his point, has anyone else run into customers balking at the real cost of shutter work?
I had two ways to fix a loose mirror return on a 70s Pentax Spotmatic last Tuesday. One method was the proper spring replacement kit I ordered for $12, but my order got delayed. The other was a temporary fix with a bent paperclip to add tension, which actually held for about 15 rolls of film. I went with the paperclip trick because I was impatient, and now I can't find the tiny screw I set down on my bench. The proper kit is still sitting in my mailbox, but the camera works fine. Does anyone else have a habit of leaving small parts loose and regretting it three days later?
Had a Nikon 50mm f/1.4 with gritty focus, tried alcohol and Q-tips for an hour with zero luck. Rubbed a soft pencil tip across the dry helicoid threads to deposit graphite, and it's smoother than any grease I've used. Anyone else found weird household fixes that beat the proper lubricants?
I was at a camera swap meet in Portland last month and watched three people in a row pull out their t-shirts to wipe a lens... one even had a greasy spot from lunch. My mentor back in the 90s drilled into me to use a rocket blower first, then a microfiber cloth only if you have to. Just saying, you're probably pushing dirt into the coating with that shirt move. Has anyone else caught themselves cringing at a repair shop when they see this?
Last week I dug through a box at an estate sale near Pittsburgh and found a factory service manual for Minolta SR-T cameras from 1982. It's got hand-written notes from the original tech in the margins about common shutter timing issues. Last month I used one of his tricks to fix a 201 that three other repairers had given up on. Three years ago I would have just ordered a new circuit board and called it done. Now I'm thinking about how much craft got lost when we switched to all digital repair methods. Anyone else got old manuals or notes from retired techs that still work better than modern guides?
Was reading through an old repair manual from 1987 and found out that over 60% of light leaks in cloth shutters come from pinholes smaller than a grain of sand. I always blamed the seals first. Has anyone else found that tacking the curtains first saves time?
Bought this 'universal' cleaning and lube set off eBay for $180 thinking it would save me money on my Yashica-Mat 124G. Turns out the grease was way too thick for the focusing helicoid and I had to toss it. Anyone else get burned by those generic repair kits?
I was cleaning a customer's F2 and decided to check it against my $30 shutter tester from eBay. Turns out the factory spec from 1971 was actually 1/1000, not 1/1000th like everyone assumes because of rounding on the dial. Has anyone else caught a camera that was just slightly off from the manual for decades?
I was digging through an old 1970s repair manual I found at an estate sale near Buffalo, and it mentioned that Kodak was making over 2 million tiny shutter springs per year at their Elmgrove plant. Never really thought about how many specialized parts went into a single camera before that. Anyone else run into wild production numbers like that for old camera components?