ivan873•22d agoMost Upvoted

Heads up - fixing a light leak on a Pentax K1000 took me 4 weekends to solve

I had this faint streak on my negatives for months and kept thinking it was a lab issue. Finally tore the camera apart and found the foam light seal around the film door had crumbled to dust. Replaced it in 20 minutes with a $3 kit from the hardware store, but I wasted like 30 hours before that swapping lenses and cleaning stuff. Anyone else ran into a stupid simple fix that took forever to catch?

2 comments

2 Comments

paulc9322d ago

Wait, did you open the back and check for light leaks while holding it up to a bright light? That works great for some cameras but on my old K1000 the light was sneaking in through a tiny gap around the film door hinge, not the back itself. I literally could not see it with that method. I had to take the whole door apart and shine a flashlight inside the body to finally spot it. @eva_lewis I get your point but not every light leak is a straight streak, sometimes the foam crumbles in weird spots and the leak shows up as a weird gradient on the film edge. It took me three rolls and a lot of head scratching before I realized it was the same old foam issue.

eva_lewis22d ago

4 weekends to solve" sounds like you were making it way harder than it needed to be. A light leak is pretty obvious once you look at the negatives - it's always a straight streak. You don't tear the whole camera apart and swap lenses for that. You just open the back, hold it up to a bright light, and look for where the light's getting in. Takes maybe 10 minutes tops. I get that foam crumbles over time but come on man, that's like basic camera troubleshooting. You probably spent more time writing this post than you would have just checking the seals first.