Leica R3 and R7 exposure wrong

[Boris Mirkov]

I got some Leicas, two R3's and one R7 and they all show me the wrong exposure result (and the same one, too). For instance, when the time is 1/125th the needle shows 1/125th of a second but the shutter goes slower, according to my ears it is 1/30th. I am using fresh SR44 batteries.

 

[gone]

I wouldn't go by my ears on this one Boris. Not sure about the R7, but my R3/4/5 cameras used to sound really slow too, but it was the gyrations of all the mirror damping after the shutter had fired. To be sure, get yourself a shutter tester that runs on Audacity. I bought one years ago for $25 on eBay and it has proven invaluable for determining how my exposures are going to come out even before I load film into a camera.

 

[Boris Mirkov]

Thanks momus for the reply. I compared sounds manual shutter speed vs Av mode, maybe I can't determine precise shutter speed but I am pretty sure that it is lower than the one shown in the viewfinder. I would try and test them with one film but I am so certain that the cameras are off with the metering that I don't want to waste film on seeing the obvious.

 

[snapguy]

ear

It seems to me film is a better indicator of shutter speed than the ear. What your ear thinks is besides the point, what comes out on film is the whole ball game, as we say.

 

[Boris Mirkov]

I'm not sure if I said it correctly, I don't think that the shutter is broken because it all seems OK when I try the shutter speeds manually, the 1/30th of a second sounds good as do the other speeds, so if I used the camera in manual mode, everything would be alright. The problem appears when I go into automatic mode, in which case the shutter speed needle in the viewfinder shows the correct exposure value but the sound of the shutter itself is slower than the one I see. In particular, 1/125th sounds like 1/15th of a second.