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Tried fixing a shutter with a hair dryer and it actually worked... sort of
This is going to sound dumb but I had this old Nikon FE that the shutter was sticking on at slow speeds. Like 1/30 and below it would hang open for a second then close real slow. I couldn't get the thing apart without the proper jig and I was just about to give up on it. Then I remembered reading somewhere that old grease can get gummy in cold weather. So I grabbed my wife's hair dryer and hit the shutter mechanism area for like 2 minutes on low heat. Sure enough after it warmed up the shutter fired perfectly at every speed for about an hour. Then it cooled down and went right back to sticking. So I guess the lesson is if you're in a pinch and the camera just needs to work for a short shoot you can fake it with heat. But for a real fix you gotta tear it down and replace the grease. Has anyone else found a temporary hack like that that got a camera through one last job?
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zarab241mo ago
Oh man that reminds me of a friend who shoots weddings... he had an old Mamiya that would only work if he kept a hand warmer taped to the side of the body during winter gigs. Like he'd literally warm it up before every shot and it'd fire fine but the second the pack cooled off the mirror would lock up halfway. He called it the "cuddle cam" and swore by it until he finally saved up for a CLA. Your hair dryer trick is definitely in the same league of weird but working fixes...
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vera_campbell28d ago
The hand warmer thing makes total sense. I had a Canon AE-1 Program back in college that would refuse to fire below like 40 degrees. I ended up keeping it inside my jacket against my chest for a solid 20 minutes before I could even think about taking a shot. People thought I was nuts but it was the only way to get the shutter to work on cold mornings. Eventually I just accepted that camera had a temperature limit and planned my shoots around it. Did your friend ever figure out what was actually wrong with the Mamiya or did the CLA just fix the cold issue for good?
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