New Nikon F2 Acquisition - Stuck Cap - Bum Shutter?

[Herr_Bigum]

Hey everybody. So I bought a beautiful chrome Nikon F2AS on ebay and it has naturally arrived with a couple issues. I hoped someone familiar with these might be able to chime in.

First of all the body cap is well and truly stuck. I've been trying to remove it all day, won't budge. Not an issue with F2s in particular as far as I can tell, but I thought it may be related to the second issue, which is the shutter not firing unless the depth of field preview button is depressed. I can cock the shutter but I only hear a very quiet sound when the shutter button is pressed, then only when I press the DOF preview button does it get tripped. Shutter speed selected doesn't matter.

It's a problem that with the cap on I can't see what's going on when it's fired, so removing that is the first objective. Any tricks for getting these unstuck?

 

[ronnies]

Getting the finder off and removing the screen might let you get in to see what's stopping the cap from coming off?

Ronnie

 

[ronnies]

Oh and you do know that the cap comes off clockwise rather than anticlockwise? Thought I'd better check.

Ronnie

 

[Herr_Bigum]

Clockwise yes, funny you should mention that. I'm switching over to Nikon gear from having used an OM-1 for years that I decided to retire and it was one of the first things I noticed when I first handled an FM2 a while ago - everything's backwards.

Good call on the prism. I was being lazy. After removing the screen I can confirm the shutter release is working, it releases the mirror, but something prevents the mirror from moving more than a few millimeters. It must be the depth of field preview lever although there is no visible indication of this. Furthermore looking at the camera from above with the prism off I noticed the body cap is indeed visibly warped, and it is drawn in towards the camera on the side of the depth of field button. Probably not a coincidence. The lever itself that you can see moving in the mirror box also may be a little bent as it drags a little on the front of the box - this is hard to describe, and it is not bent in the direction you'd think it should be if it's interfering with the mirror, but rather away from the mirror.

So, could be worse than I thought. Probably a simple enough fix once you get the cap off and figure out exactly where the hang up is, but there has clearly been damage of some kind. Strange that there is none visible, no drops at least, and no damage to the box.

I'm looking into getting a refund. Hopefully I get to keep the camera, it's in great shape notwithstanding the above. If I keep it I may need to send it off for repair. I'm traveling at the moment otherwise I would have access to the myriad tools and household objects I would ordinarily misuse in order to loose this cap and irrevocably damage something. I'll try to follow up if I manage to get it fixed, in case anyone's interested.

Man, what a beautiful camera. . .

 

[ronnies]

I did wonder if the cap was fouling the stop down lever and stopping the mirror from rising.

Ronnie

 

[reddesert]

What Ronnie said, probably the aperture actuating lever is bent, fouling the cap, and because it can't move freely it is blocking the shutter cycle. The DOF preview button is mechanically connected to this lever.

It's possible to bend this lever by tangling the lens and body linkages while mounting / dismounting the lens, if one forgets that the lens turns the wrong way to dismount. I don't know exactly how they get bent, but I did it myself many years ago with my first Nikon slr. A camera shop managed to get the lens and camera apart and fix it for me. Once you get them apart, it may just require bending the lever back into shape.