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10 years of fixing shutters and I just learned the aperture ring trick
I've been repairing cameras since 2014, mostly old SLRs and rangefinders. Every time a shutter was sticky or blades were off, I'd tear the whole lens apart, clean everything, lube what I could, and pray it worked. Last Tuesday a customer brings in a Yashica with a stuck aperture and says, "My uncle always said to fire the shutter at every aperture before you open anything." So I try it, just cycling the ring a few times at each stop. The blades freed up in about 4 minutes. No disassembly, no cleaning. I felt like an idiot standing there. How many lenses did I destroy or waste hours on because I never tried the simplest thing? Has anyone else had a basic step like that blow their mind way later than it should have?
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riverf3415d ago
Tbh, the "fire the shutter at every aperture" line is the part that gets me, because it points to something way deeper than the trick itself. Most of us treat these cameras like they need surgery when really they just need to move, the same way old joints loosen up with use. Makes me wonder how many other repairs we skip because we're too proud to try the dumb stuff first, you know?
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