On a lark I bought the shell of a F5 body (no batt holder, no focus screen, no VF, no back) that was listed as possibly having a bad shutter. The seller was honest in his description of the problem; after an exposure, the red light on the body would flash along with the "Err" code in both the viewfinder and the body LCD.
In looking at the pictures, the body was/is in almost pristine condition, so I figured that the very low price was worth it for replacement parts alone for my other F5, even should the shutter turn out to be bad.
However, when I got the body and swapped over the parts from my other F5 to make it complete, I found the problem to be more mysterious than described and may indicate that the shutter is not bad.
The film chamber was lightly oily on that the takeup drum (exposed side). Someone tried to oil the camera?
I also found traces of something on the shutter blades, so I very gently cleaned them with 95% alcohol, taking care to be very gentle and letting the shutter dry totally before trying to fire it.
Loading my trusty dummy roll, reseting the presets by holding down on the BKTand CSM buttons on the back for 5 seconds and pressing the shutter release loaded the film with no problems.
Next, I set the camera to manual, single exposure advance mode and fired it at 1250th of a second. It fired and registered the error mentioned above.
OK, what about Bulb? Reset everything, reload the dummy roll and it fires in Bulb fine. In fact, it fired perfectly fine on every shutter speed up until 1250th of a second. So, I am thinking, yeah the shutter is probably going out of spec and can't handle speeds above 1000th of a second.
But wait! Just for grins, I started loading and firing the camera on the CH advance speed in 5 or 6 frame bursts up from a 60th of a second (reloading several times as my dummy roll keeps getting shorter and shorter with trims from damage) and the camera made it through 1250th to 1600th before throwing an error.
(Batteries show full BTW and the motor drive was crisp and without lag.)
I found I could obtain long bursts (the entire roll of 27 frames several times) @ 1250th) of a second IF I never let up on the shutter release.
Something is funny in Denmark...
Almost seems like a capacitor is going bad or something in the power circuit is not kosher.
Ideas? Wild speculations?
In looking at the pictures, the body was/is in almost pristine condition, so I figured that the very low price was worth it for replacement parts alone for my other F5, even should the shutter turn out to be bad.
However, when I got the body and swapped over the parts from my other F5 to make it complete, I found the problem to be more mysterious than described and may indicate that the shutter is not bad.
The film chamber was lightly oily on that the takeup drum (exposed side). Someone tried to oil the camera?
I also found traces of something on the shutter blades, so I very gently cleaned them with 95% alcohol, taking care to be very gentle and letting the shutter dry totally before trying to fire it.
Loading my trusty dummy roll, reseting the presets by holding down on the BKTand CSM buttons on the back for 5 seconds and pressing the shutter release loaded the film with no problems.
Next, I set the camera to manual, single exposure advance mode and fired it at 1250th of a second. It fired and registered the error mentioned above.
OK, what about Bulb? Reset everything, reload the dummy roll and it fires in Bulb fine. In fact, it fired perfectly fine on every shutter speed up until 1250th of a second. So, I am thinking, yeah the shutter is probably going out of spec and can't handle speeds above 1000th of a second.
But wait! Just for grins, I started loading and firing the camera on the CH advance speed in 5 or 6 frame bursts up from a 60th of a second (reloading several times as my dummy roll keeps getting shorter and shorter with trims from damage) and the camera made it through 1250th to 1600th before throwing an error.
(Batteries show full BTW and the motor drive was crisp and without lag.)
I found I could obtain long bursts (the entire roll of 27 frames several times) @ 1250th) of a second IF I never let up on the shutter release.
Something is funny in Denmark...
Almost seems like a capacitor is going bad or something in the power circuit is not kosher.
Ideas? Wild speculations?