Shutter on a Yashica Mat 124G froze mid roll at a wedding shoot in Oak Park and it was my own dumb fault
Last Saturday I was second shooter at a wedding in Oak Park and the shutter on my Yashica Mat 124G locked up right in the middle of the first dance, 47 frames into the roll with no backup body on me. I popped the back, found the leaf shutter blades gummed up with old lube that had turned to paste, and I'm telling you right now that any tech who still skips a full CLA on a 50 year old TLR is asking for trouble. I spent 20 minutes working the blades with lighter fluid and a Q-tip behind the church kitchen and got maybe 30 more frames out of it, but the slow speeds were garbage the rest of the night. Lesson for me is that a $40 cleaning job would have saved a $900 shoot, and I'm done trusting a seller's word that a camera was "recently serviced." What's your go to solvent for dried up shutter grease that won't eat the paint on these old bodies?