has anyone encountered this?

stillsilver · Jan 18, 2008

Alright gang, heres one for your input.

Today I was out shooting and encountered this problem. When I went to fire my Bronica SQ-Ai, it wouldnt. It was mounted on a tripod. After fiddling with everything, I took it off the tripod and it fired. Both with and w/o the cable release. When I put it back on the tripod it would not work again. When I depressed the shutter release button I heard the contact being made. The same with the cable release. Im thinking that when the camera is on the tripod something is shorting out. I have used this camera and tripod combination since 2005. Today is the fist time this has happened. Ive had the tripod for about 20 years and never had this problem with any other cameras.

Thanks

Mike

DWThomas · Jan 18, 2008

Hmm - mine is an SQ-A, but assuming the Ai has battery(ies) in the bottom, could the tripod mounting surface be pressuring the battery cover and disturbing contact? I'm thinking the tripod screw socket is blind, so an anchor screw couldn't go too far, just bottom out.

My 2¢

DaveT

stillsilver · Jan 18, 2008

I thought about using a spacer between the camera and the tripod but I haven’t done that yet. I’ll try it this weekend. I’ll cut it so it doesn’t contact the battery compartment.

Thanks Dave

Mike

stillsilver · Jan 30, 2008

Sorry about the slug reply, I was hit with a flu that kicked my a**. Sat. (1/19) I played with the camera and the tripod. The first thing I did was to apply pressure to the battery compartment. The camera fired with and w/out the cable release. Then I put the camera on the tripod and screwed it in partway and the camera again fired. I then tightened everything down properly and guess what, it all worked. Now I am left scratching my head wondering when it will happen next. Probably in a remote area on a long road trip.

Thank you for all your input

Mike

DWThomas · Jan 30, 2008

stillsilver said:
I then tightened everything down properly and guess what, it all worked. Now I am left scratching my head wondering when it will happen next. Probably in a remote area on a long road trip.

From a career in electronic and computer related areas, I can tell you that's far and away the most frustrating sort of behavior. If you're lucky, perhaps it was a bad contact somewhere and the sequence of different mounting stresses flexed something and rubbed through the oxide. If you're not lucky (e.g, like most of us) maybe a pad of some resilient material with a cutout in the battery area should be part of your gadget bag filler.

Good luck with it.

DaveT

JBrunner · Jan 30, 2008

Try some other things. The tripod bit may have been simply a coincidence, the handling might be what is affecting the intermittent operation. Just a thought.

Lee Shively · Jan 30, 2008

I've never even handled one of these cameras so this is advice from the ignorant.

Is it possible that the tripod mount is causing pressure on the camera back/body connection so that it disengages slightly from the camera body and prevents the shutter from tripping?

Okay. You owe me exactly what that advise is worth.

panastasia · Jan 30, 2008

stillsilver said:
Alright gang, heres one for your input.

Today I was out shooting and encountered this problem. When I went to fire my Bronica SQ-Ai, it wouldnt. It was mounted on a tripod. After fiddling with everything, I took it off the tripod and it fired. Both with and w/o the cable release. When I put it back on the tripod it would not work again. When I depressed the shutter release button I heard the contact being made. The same with the cable release. Im thinking that when the camera is on the tripod something is shorting out. I have used this camera and tripod combination since 2005. Today is the fist time this has happened. Ive had the tripod for about 20 years and never had this problem with any other cameras.

Thanks

Mike

I had a 35mm that did something strange - when I pressed the shutter button it fired off 2 or 3 shots (multiple exposures). The problem had something to do with a piece of tape w/foil backing that I used for holding a length of film to the take-up-spool. The problem went away when I used a different kind of tape. A short maybe??

stillsilver · Jan 30, 2008

Dave,

I will make a spacer that has a cutout for the battery compartment. I have some ¼” foam laying around somewhere. Or I might raid the kid’ craft box.

Mike

kenh · Feb 15, 2008

Similar thing on my SQ-B

I had a similar thing happen to my SQ-B. The SQ-B battery failure causes the shutter to default to 1/500th. It happened to me on a trip, I thought it was due to high humidity. But it happened again a few months later. So I finally took apart the camera and found that the battery compartment was connected to the body through two metal "spring" contacts. One of these contacts was not under enough pressure so that sometimes it opened up the circuit and the system went to the default shutter speed.

The key point was that the camera was built with a battery compartment built into the base - around the tripod mounting socket - and that battery compartment was connected to the camera via two more contacts. Thus when I tried to clean the battery and it's contacts to the system I was only cleaning 1/2 the contacts in the system.

Perhaps the SQAi is built in a similar way.

has anyone encountered this?

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