Mirror Catching

[Layton]

I came into possession of a Pentax Spotmatic last week. The camera seems to be in faily bad shape. The battery door is jammed, focus screen is scratched up and the camera is very very dirty, inside and out.

I can deal with all of those things myself, however when examining the function of the camera itself I noticed that the mirror catches and does not flip completely to the top. I noticed that it catches on what seems to be a little switch type piece of metal on the inside of the camera. forgive my ignorance about 35mm camera but does anyone know what is going on here?

Thank you in advance.

 

[Steve Smith]

I can't say at the moment but I will be at home in a couple of hours and I will have a look at mine and let you know.


Steve.

 

[Steve Smith]

I have had a look.

I don't know what the little bit on the side does but my mirror does not touch it.


Steve.

 

[John Koehrer]

That's the switch release, When the mirror goes up, the mirror should hit it & turn the meter off. Test it by turning the meter on and push up on the lever, The switch should go to the off position. If the switch is sticking you can try a drop of alcohol(the wonder solvent) or lighter fluid along the side of the switch & work it several times.

 

[Steve Smith]

That's interesting. It doesn't do that on mine. Pushing the lever up does move the switch to the off position but the mirror doesn't do it when I press the shutter but it does when I push the mirror up manually...... so forget what I said earlier as my mirror obviously does touch that lever even though it didn't look as though it did.


Steve.