Eh story time.
I recently found out I have a light leak on my Pentax LX since all the frames on my negatives have a bright spot on the top left corner. I take the lens off, pop the back open, and put the mirror up. Lo and behold there’s a small hole on the bottom right corner. Immediately a flashback from few weeks ago played out in my mind. I painfully watched in slow motion of the exact moment where my camera strap somehow got undone and then followed by a “splat”! Obviously at the time there were some minor cosmetic defect but since the LX is tough as a tank I carried on with my shootings.
Fast forward to me inspecting the small hole on the shutter curtain. I see a little knob and pondered if I could move it and solve my insignificant problem. After moving it so that the hole is completely masked, curiosity got the best of me and a quick search online tells me that it’s the watch data film blind and thumb screw. Realizing that this definitely won’t solve my problem and any photos I take will have a black rectangle on the top left corner meant I needed to send in the camera for repair. After few emails to a repair shop, they requested some pictures of the damage to assess the situation. Since the film blind is obstructing the problem, I decided to do what anyone would do and used my thumb in attempt to move the thumb dial. It’s called a thumb dial for a reason right? Well tough luck because this is where shit really hit the fan.
Due to my fat and buttery finger, general clumsiness, bad luck, or just a combination of all on top of an awful day, the thumb dial did not want to bludge. My finger slipped and went right into the titanium curtain. Now that is not a sound an average person would expect to hear, it was almost like if there was the ideal sound of something being crumbled, somewhat almost cartoon like. I was in shock. I didn’t know how to process this. First, it was anger. How the hell did this happen? It was called a “thumb” dial for a reason! Second, it was straight up confusion. I was so in awe but also puzzled with the sound that the titanium curtain made. I’ve used my LX for the good past 4 years and every press of the shutter gave a loud slap of the mirror. Ive startled people on the streets and shot it in a church in Granda, Spain where silence is mandatory as there was a Nun praying. How can something made of titanium be so fragile? And third, I was defeated. I thought my ingenious solution would solve my light leak issue but instead just exacerbated the situation exponentially. I’ve sent emails to two different repair services, including an officially Pentax licensed one, but to my vain, they would not take on the repair.
The story ends here’s in a down note as I had to grab an LX body from evilBay (although not in 100% functional condition as it suffers the classical sticky mirror syndrome) and send it for repair. So yes, to answer OP’s question, I did exactly that because they wouldn’t let me have camera to camera open heart (curtain) replacement surgery.
Attached are photos of the damage:
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