I spent 6 hours chasing a light leak that turned out to be my own shutter testing mistake

Hugo Scott · 2026-09-22T10:25:04.199449+00:00

Last Saturday I was servicing a customer's old rangefinder and kept seeing a faint streak on every test roll, so I tore the whole thing down twice looking for a pinhole in the curtain. I even taped off the seams and ran three more rolls through it, each one showing the same thin line in the same spot on frame 4 or 5. Around hour six I finally noticed my test bench lamp sits at the exact angle to bounce off the pressure plate when I cock the shutter with the back open. I moved the lamp two feet to the left and the streak vanished on the next roll. What got me was how fast I jumped to blaming the camera, the customer even asked if it had been dropped and I said probably. Turns out the gear was fine the whole time and I almost quoted him a curtain replacement. How do you all rule out your own setup before you start pointing at the camera?

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I spent 6 hours chasing a light leak that turned out to be my own shutter testing mistake | Camera Repairers - Talk Freely