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My shutter jammed halfway through a roll at the Grand Canyon and I had to wind it by hand
Two weeks ago I was at Mather Point with my Pentax K1000 and about 18 shots into a roll of Portra 400 when the shutter just froze open. I panicked a little, popped the back open in my jacket like an idiot, then remembered that would fog the film, so I shut it fast and covered the lens with my hand. I ended up clicking through the rest of the roll with the lens cap on just to free the mechanism, then finished the day on my backup body. Has anyone dealt with a shutter sticking like this, and is a CLA worth it on a body this old or should I just retire it?
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haydenp952d ago
Dealt with the same exact thing on my old Spotmatic last summer, mid roll at a family thing, and I did the whole lens cap click through too just to get the film out. Took it to a local guy who does CLA work and he said stuck shutters on these old bodies are almost always dried grease, not a dead shutter. Cost me about eighty bucks and it came back feeling brand new, smooth and snappy like it was in the seventies. A K1000 is such a tank that retiring it over a sticky shutter feels like throwing out a good truck because the door squeaks. Get the CLA done, these bodies are worth keeping alive and there are fewer and fewer people who can fix them right. Poking at it yourself with lighter fluid like some forum guys say is how you turn an eighty dollar fix into a paperweight.
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