Exercising Your Shutters

[cliveh]

Exercising Your Shutters

I must admit I take mine for a good run every morning. Stick or ball, the shutter always comes back with it.

 

[Marvin]

On the subject of leaving the shutter cocked or not, I used to always leave the shutter uncocked on my X700 but the newer F5 and N80 wind and cock the shutter after each shot. The F5 is said to check its shutter each time you use it and adjust it if it is off. Does it make any difference it you leave a lens wide open or stopped down when in storage.

 

[BrianShaw]

There are several central shutters, designed to work almost dry.
Some Gauthier shutters and a lot more russian GOMZ shutters, designed to work in the -40°C range

Interesting. Thanks for specifics.

 

[Leigh B]

Now, clocks are different, they run 24 hours a day, year after year. A camera shutter is only an intermediate timer, usually less than a second.

That's correct. They are two very different mechanisms which are similar in some respects.

When I first got into camera repair I studied watch and clock repair to better understand small gear trains and timing mechanisms.

Lubricants in a shutter fall into two broad categories... shafts/bearings and sliding parts. This is just like clocks.

The high-quality oils are used for shafts and bearings, and in extremely small quantities. Very few shafts in a shutter require this.
Properly applied, the oil should only be inside the bearing, supporting the shaft.
None should be on the outside where it would collect dust. And if it is/does, it doesn't matter because that oil is not doing anything.

This is the most common error by amateur and quasi-professional techs. It's difficult to get the right amount of oil in the right place.
I have a set of jeweler's oilers, and normally use the smallest one. I need a magnifying glass to see the oil drop on the end.

The sliding mechanisms are relatively immune to physical contamination because of the way they work.
Molybdenum Disulphide (aka Moly-D) here... NEVER use graphite; it's horrible stuff.

The amount of wear to which a shutter is subjected is extremely small, even with shutters in high-volume commercial use.
Yes, it is possible to wear one out, but that requires a lot of dedicated effort. (Talking about modern escapement-based mechanical shutters.)

- Leigh

 

[removed account4]

There are several central shutters, designed to work almost dry.

To further the intelligent discussion perhaps you can be specifif. People seem to repeat this without specifics and make inorrect assumptions. Like the time someone was saying a dial Compur was designed to rum dry, but not according to the Compur repair manual... Or Graphex. So please state which were intended by the manufacturer to run dry please.

i never said graflex or compur shutters were supposed to run dry,
but i know from conversations i had with people like steve grimes
that there are some that there are some shutters that
are not supposed to have any wet-lubricant at all ( the air piston on my manhatten cycle graphic for example ).
does a wollensak studio shutter ( or a betax ) use a wet lubricant or ??
if the aperture blades in a studio shutter get wet they may get destroyed since they are made of some strange paper like product ...

 

[Leigh B]

There are circumstances under which mechanisms must run dry even if not designed to.

Case in point...

When my wife took the Nikon F2 to Antarctica I disassembled it and removed all of the lubricant, using proper ultrasonic cleaning techniques.
This was the best way to guarantee that the camera would work under all climatic conditions, which it did perfectly.

When she returned I gave it a standard CLA to restore its normal working condition.

- Leigh

 

[fotch]

Leigh, I agree with everything you said 100%.

Do you still do camera repair?

Thanks

 

[Leigh B]

Not really. I repaired Nikons and some Hasselblads full time while I was in night school.
I maintained a shop for a while after I graduated.

But that was quite a while ago. Now I just work on my own stuff.

Thanks.

- Leigh

 

[BrianShaw]

There are several central shutters, designed to work almost dry.

i never said ...

No, you didn't John. I don't believe anyone said you did. I was asking specific example because that statement gets used and OTHER PEOPLE have said so, perhaps unknowingly, and then want to argue for it to be true.

(And, forgive me Leigh, but examples of subzero Antartica is a very real but low probability example that calls for special measures. Surely not what most of us experience in our daily lives. )

There are definitely parts of shutters that should have no lubrication, as you say.

 

[Leigh B]

(And, forgive me Leigh, but examples of subzero Antartica is a very real but low probability example that calls for special measures. Surely not what most of us experience in our daily lives. )

Hi Brian,

You'll note that I prefaced my comment with: "There are circumstances under which mechanisms must run dry even if not designed to."

In fact that was quite commonly done on F2's. I did a number of them for that reason while working at the repair shop.
That's how I learned about it.

- Leigh

 

[removed account4]

No, you didn't John. I don't believe anyone said you did. I was asking specific example because that statement gets used and OTHER PEOPLE have said so, perhaps unknowingly, and then want to argue for it to be true.

(And, forgive me Leigh, but examples of subzero Antartica is a very real but low probability example that calls for special measures. Surely not what most of us experience in our daily lives. )

There are definitely parts of shutters that should have no lubrication, as you say.

i agree .. examples are always KEY .. because as you say people quote and requote and eventually things get
askew .. i can imagine who knows when someone suggests i said "no shutters ever need any lubrication " ...

( i should have used examples in my earlier post )

john

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

So, I'd say the answer is: in theory, with excellent maintenance and proper lubricants, shutters shouldn't require periodic "exercise," but in reality, with the actual maintenance that many shutters that most people use have had, it doesn't hurt to get things moving once in a while.

I have 22 working LF shutters, if I've counted properly, all in various states of maintenance and frequency of use, and periodically I'll go through them all and make sure they're running properly. I sell off things that I really know I don't need, so they don't become a burden to maintain.

Old Ilex/Acme shutters seem to benefit the most from periodic exercise, particularly at the slow speeds.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

My Pentax 165mm leaf shutter lens is stored with the shutter released, as per instructions on storage after use. It's no big effort to think of this at the end of a day's shoot.
I think it would be more of problem for focal plane shutters in cameras that haven't been exercised in a long while e.g. loss of accuracy over time.

 

[E. von Hoegh]

I'm really surprised no one recommended WD-40 as a cure-all.

 

[Leigh B]

Must you suggest that?

- Leigh

 

[E. von Hoegh]

Must you suggest that?

- Leigh

Well, just about every other bad idea was covered. Many think it's actually a lubricant.....

 

[Leigh B]

WD-40 is paraffin. It actually does work well as a lubricant in loose-fitting mechanisms like locks and firearms.

But its main purpose is water displacement, hence the WD name. It's used to protect metal from corrosion.

- Leigh

 

[Vaughn]

I exercise my LF shutters a couple times right before I pull the darkslide. The main reason -- it makes sure that I have closed the lens (they won't fire if they are open).

Now I just need to find a way to remind myself that I have the lens cap on my barrel lenses before I pull the darkslide! LOL!

Vaughn

 

[Leigh B]

I exercise my LF shutters a couple times right before I pull the darkslide.
The main reason -- it makes sure that I have closed the lens (they won't fire if they are open).

i do the same thing, for the same reason.

- Leigh