I finally got that old Hasselblad 500C back together after a week of fighting with the shutter timing

A customer brought in the camera with a shutter that was sticking at 1/500th. I thought it would be a simple clean and lube job. I stripped it down, cleaned the old grease, and put in fresh lubricant. When I put it all back together, the shutter was still off, now dragging at the lower speeds too. I must have taken that whole mirror and shutter box apart five times, checking each gear and spring. The problem ended up being a tiny, almost invisible burr on one of the shutter curtain roller axles. I found it by pure luck when I ran my fingernail over it. It took a full week of evenings in the shop to find and polish that one little flaw. Has anyone else had a simple fix turn into a days-long hunt for a single tiny part flaw?

3 comments

3 Comments

abby8362mo ago

My old Leica M3 had a rangefinder patch that was just a little dim. I spent three whole nights taking the top plate off, cleaning every prism surface I could find. The real issue was a single, tiny speck of foam dust from a disintegrated light seal that had settled on the beam splitter. It was smaller than a grain of salt!

olivias882mo ago

Man, that's wild how something so small can mess with the viewfinder like that. I read a forum post once where a guy had a similar haze issue, and it turned out to be the tiniest bit of fungus starting on a prism edge. He said it looked like a faint spiderweb only visible from a certain angle. Makes you realize how precise that little optical path is.

perez.christopher19d ago

I don't know, I feel like people get way too obsessed with this stuff. That speck of foam dust or tiny bit of fungus, seriously, if you can't see it in normal daylight when you're actually taking photos, does it really matter? I've got an old Canon from the 70s that's probably got all sorts of junk floating around inside the prism. The viewfinder's a little hazy in one corner but you know what? All my shots come out fine. I think folks like to make these problems bigger than they are so they feel like they're doing something technical and important. Half the time you're just chasing ghosts.