Help with a nikon F3 camera

[coll]

And a final guestion please!
Do i have, to have locked the mirror up all the time?
It is the only possition that camera and motor drive seem to be working ok!
Normal or not?
Thanks

 

[Kino]

Not normal.

Sounds like to me the internal linkages are sticky with old lubricant and causing erratic behavior.

Even if the shutter release button can be pressed and released to return to normal position, it does not mean that an associated internal linkage is moving through it's full range.

Unless the purchase price was so inexpensive it would warrant a trip to the repair shop, I would return it and try again with another camera body.

 

[Les Sarile]

Hello everybody.
My nikon f3 has a strange behavior.
When a lens is on, i observe that when i arm the lever, the shutter fires by itself before i release the button.
This does not happen when the camera is without the lens.
I can not explain that!
I observed that the problem started when i tried a motor drive.
Even with the motor drive i have the same problem!
When the lens is on it works unstoppably at c and s, but whithout lens it works properly

Have you any idea what's going on?
Thanks

I have had two other cameras (different brands and models) exhibit the behavior you state, advance the arm and the shutter fires without tripping the release button. I didn't try either with or without lens to see if that made a difference. Been awhile but in both cases it turned out to be a simple fix that involved opening the bottom and adjusting a mechanical linkage as they were both fully mechanical. I had never worked on cameras but the concept seemed simple enough and it seems both cameras worked very similarly. I suspect that this part of the F3 may function similarly as well but I have yet to open my F3.

 

[coll]

Thank you guys.
It gets worse...
Now i can see also that the LCD screen,even with new batteries in the camera, does not indicate the shutter speed but just confusing separated lines!

 

[coll]

This is baby rattle, not a camera!

 

[skahde]

The aperture lever sequence is

1. Shutter triggered
2. DOWN + mirror up
3. UP + mirror down

Good point, Andreas! I had a Nikkor HC 1.8/85 mm causing the same on my FE2 as well as my FM2. The aperture-lever inside the bayonet needed to be modified to remedy this problem and before that the repair-shop tried to solve it by "fixing" the mirror-box as the likely culprit but with no success. You can provoke the behaviour by manipulating the aperture lever inside the bayonet while cocking the camera.