Help with broken hotshoe please

[Peninsula]

Hello ladies and gents, I hope someone can help with this...

I have two OM10 bodies. One is pristine and another was bundled with it for parts.

Since buying a flash I have discovered that the newer, prettier body will not activate the flash while the other one will.

The problem with the 'for parts' body seems to be the light meter and I *think* it would be easier to repair a flash shoe than a light meter (is this true?!). I would therefore like to get the flash shoe on the better looking body working somehow using parts from the other body.

A bit of research threw up the OM10 service manual online, but this does not seem to contain much on this issue: http://members.chello.nl/pkagei/OM10/OLYMPUS/olympusom10sm.htm
Ebay item number 290554491862 shows me that at least some people out therehave come across issues with the contacts/connections to the flash.

Can anyone advise what I should check to find the root of the problem, or any other advice? Thanks

 

[MattKing]

I would suggest posting in the Camera repair forum in the main part of the site. John Hermanson (zuiko.com) is way more likely to see your post.

 

[Peninsula]

Thanks, I'll try that

 

[wblynch]

You can easily remove the top cover of your 'good' OM10 and look for a broken wire. Two things come to my mind about the non-functioning shoe. First is a broken wire as mentioned above, second is a fried switch contact from using the wrong kind of flash.

If it were an OM1 you could test by using the pc port for a wired flash, bypassing the shoe. But, the OM10 doesn't have that.

 

[Peninsula]

Update: good and bad news on this issue with flash not working. Bad news is that I shot a roll of 36 exp Ilford B&W and it came out entirely blank. Only bit that had been exposed was the leader. It turned out the shutter was jammed.

Good news is that once I fixed the jammed shutter, the flash worked. The camera will only trigger the flash when the shutter is open, so once the shutter was ok the signal went to the flash shoe.

To fix the shutter I removed the lens and opened the back and gripped the shutter cloth from front and back with one hand, while pressing the shutter button. Jiggled the cloth a bit and it opened!