Snowfire
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I purchased the above named camera a few months ago and have been using it without major incident until now. Recently, I decided to try the camera out for UV photography and had a ZWB1 filter disk retrofitted to one of the stock filter assemblies for the purpose. I loaded up a roll of Delta 3200 and shot it and was surprised--but in an unexpected, nasty way. Every frame, at exactly 6.5mm from the right margin, has a vertical bright bar--essentially ruining the entire roll.
Sometimes there are other bars, as well, but these are at variable positions. The one at 6.5mm is there in every frame, however. To detail the phenomenon, it appeared when this roll was loaded in the camera; the previous roll (Kodak 160VC) manifested little or none of what is seen here. I am not aware of any particular adverse event that happened to the camera between rolls (the camera did get dropped on a floor a few weeks earlier, but seemed unaffected immediately afterwards.)
The bars do not extend beyond the edge of the frame; the offending light that caused them clearly came through the film gate and is not any sort of leak from the back of the camera.
One of my first thoughts was that perhaps some light might be leaking around my improvised filter mount on the front of the lens, but on reflection this does not make sense: such a leak if it existed would be expected to cause either uniform fogging or perhaps horizontal banding, not vertical bars at a fixed frame position. The fixed position apparently rules out sun flare as a cause also: the shots were taken at many different angles with respect to the light and direct sun was not even present in all of them.
I have examined the empty camera in hopes of uncovering some fault in the operation of the rear slit gate, but found nothing of note. When the lens turret is parked either in the cocked or discharged position, nothing is exposed at the rear except a blank metal drum--there is nothing at the position where the bars appear, so I tend to doubt that these artifacts are being created between exposures.
This leaves the possibility that the bars are created during the actual exposure. Swing-lens cameras are notorious for problems with the lens rotation mechanism, and presumably KMZ products are not immune; but if that is what this is, I am somewhat dumbfounded by the suddenness and severity of the issue, as well as disappointed that it ruined my first UV experiment with this camera. My questions for other KMZ owners, past or present, are:
!) Does this look like anything you have seen?
2) Is abrupt onset of such a problem usual?
3) Is it possible that something about the way an individual roll of film was loaded could temporarily elicit this behavior?
4) Is this camera beyond salvaging, or would some service such as a simple CLA be helpful?
Sometimes there are other bars, as well, but these are at variable positions. The one at 6.5mm is there in every frame, however. To detail the phenomenon, it appeared when this roll was loaded in the camera; the previous roll (Kodak 160VC) manifested little or none of what is seen here. I am not aware of any particular adverse event that happened to the camera between rolls (the camera did get dropped on a floor a few weeks earlier, but seemed unaffected immediately afterwards.)
The bars do not extend beyond the edge of the frame; the offending light that caused them clearly came through the film gate and is not any sort of leak from the back of the camera.
One of my first thoughts was that perhaps some light might be leaking around my improvised filter mount on the front of the lens, but on reflection this does not make sense: such a leak if it existed would be expected to cause either uniform fogging or perhaps horizontal banding, not vertical bars at a fixed frame position. The fixed position apparently rules out sun flare as a cause also: the shots were taken at many different angles with respect to the light and direct sun was not even present in all of them.
I have examined the empty camera in hopes of uncovering some fault in the operation of the rear slit gate, but found nothing of note. When the lens turret is parked either in the cocked or discharged position, nothing is exposed at the rear except a blank metal drum--there is nothing at the position where the bars appear, so I tend to doubt that these artifacts are being created between exposures.
This leaves the possibility that the bars are created during the actual exposure. Swing-lens cameras are notorious for problems with the lens rotation mechanism, and presumably KMZ products are not immune; but if that is what this is, I am somewhat dumbfounded by the suddenness and severity of the issue, as well as disappointed that it ruined my first UV experiment with this camera. My questions for other KMZ owners, past or present, are:
!) Does this look like anything you have seen?
2) Is abrupt onset of such a problem usual?
3) Is it possible that something about the way an individual roll of film was loaded could temporarily elicit this behavior?
4) Is this camera beyond salvaging, or would some service such as a simple CLA be helpful?
