Tried using canned air on a shutter curtain and learned a hard lesson

I was cleaning a Nikon FE shutter curtain last weekend and figured a quick blast of canned air would blow off some dust. Instead it pushed a tiny piece of grit right into the curtain slit and now there's a vertical scratch on the film plane side. Took me 3 hours to disassemble and clean it out with a microbrush and some isopropyl. Won't ever do that again. Anyone else had canned air wreck something simple?

2 comments

2 Comments

ellis.victor1mo ago

Hard lesson" - more like expensive one, buddy.

wesleyburns1mo ago

yeah I had a buddy do something kinda similar with a leaf shutter. @ellis.victor is right, it's a real drag when you try to help a camera out and just make it worse. my friend used canned air on a Compur shutter and it just pushed dust deeper into the blades, he ended up having to send it out for a full CLA.