Loading…
9
My shutter tester lied to me for 6 months and a $12 roll of film finally caught it
I picked up a Canon AE-1 at a yard sale in Boise back in March, shutter sounded fine to my ear, tester said all speeds were within a third of a stop. So I shot a test roll through it, developed it, and every frame past 1/250 came out half black. Turned out the second curtain was bouncing, and my tester only samples the total open time, not the actual curtain travel. I'd been trusting that thing on probably 40 customer cameras since Christmas. I pulled the back off the tester and the little phototransistor had a blob of old foam dust sitting right on the sensor window, just enough to smear the readings. Cleaned it with a Q-tip and some alcohol, and now it flags the AE-1 as two stops slow at 1/500, which matches what the film showed. Lesson for me is that a tester only tells you what it can see, and mine wasn't seeing the gap between the curtains at all. What's everyone using to catch curtain bounce, because I clearly need a backup way to check?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
phoenix_carter5d ago
The tester situation gets folks because we treat these gadgets like they're giving us the whole picture when they're really just reporting one number. Here's the thing nobody talks about though: curtain bounce is often a sign of bad lube, not bad springs. Old grease in these Japanese bodies turns into glue after 40 years, and the second curtain drags just enough to bounce off the bumper. I'd bet the AE-1 sat unused for years before that yard sale, which is the worst thing for a shutter. Before you buy any fancy tester, try cycling it a few hundred times on the slow speeds. Sometimes the grease warms up and the bounce goes away on its own. If it still bounces after that, then it's a real repair, not a tester problem.
4