Nikon F3 wide gaps between negatives

[Robin Guymer]

I bought this old F3 in a pretty rough state but was able to free it all up and it seemed to be working well. I know I should have shot a test roll first. However I took it along with my other F3 on a family trip and shot one colour roll of Fuji Industrial 400 with this one. When I developed the negs in Cinestill C41 they were terrific but for negs 1 to 25 I got a variety of large gaps between the negs of 4mm to 9mm. Then about 5 negs were jammed together and even overlapping followed by the last few frames had the correct gap.

So to retest it I put in a dead roll and with the lens off and set on B I marked each frame with a pen whilst the shutter was held open. All were okay with the correct gap for all 24 frames. I can understand frames overlapping if the film skipped the teeth but I just cannot work out the mechanical fault of the film winding on too far each time. Maybe it just had a stuck stopper in the film winder mechanism and it has freed itself now? Any thoughts on the matter? Should I take the top off and look for signs of wear in the mechanism that could be causing this?

 

[Kino]

You said you were able to "free it all up"; what was frozen?

That alone indicates you might want to take both the top and bottom off to see what's going on inside.

Of course, a CLA would probably solve your problems nicely, but you sound like a DIY type of person...

 

[Ian C]

Here are some repair notes and diagrams for the Nikon F3. The film advance mechanism is shown on page M5.

http://ss-it.de/data/servicemanuals/F3 (V. 1).pdf

 

[Sirius Glass]

Send it for a CLA and get that problem taken care of and other problems will be kept from happening in the future.

 

[Robin Guymer]

Send it for a CLA and get that problem taken care of and other problems will be kept from happening in the future.

Yes a CLA is clearly the answer. But it is an old banged up F3 I paid $70AUD for. Spend another $200 on a CLA and it will still be only worth $100AUD given it's looks. Kino got it right, I am a DIY sort of guy. I stripped apart a $40 F2 rewired it, new battery compartment, new rubber bumpers and light seals, adjusted the self timer and fixed the low speed timer and now that camera works superbly. I just like beat up old cameras as they are often better performers than the AAA collectors that have got all stiff and stuck from no use. It is fun and challenging to get these old cameras going again.

 

[Mick Fagan]

One possible way to test the winding mechanism without pulling it apart, is to whack an MD4 motor drive on and run a roll through. There are multi function backs for the F3, specifically the MF-18, which are only to be operated with a drive attached. The reason supplied is to ensure even spacing between frames. Which is important as this back imprints either the date or numbers between the frames, therefore the frame spacing needs to be wide and accurate.

You could then see if the winder mechanism is dodgy; maybe.

$70 AUD is pretty good, or the camera may be pretty stuffed; but still work (mostly).

Mick.

 

[shutterfinger]

Complete factory service manuals for your used as a battering ram camera are available at http://arcticwolfs.net/

 

[Robin Guymer]

Thanks for all the great replies and no doubt you've all been loosing sleep wondering how can it wind on the film further than it is meant to. Well I think I worked it out, but correct me if wrong.
When I think about it, this was the first roll of film I have put in this camera and looking back at the negatives, the gap returned to normal near the end of the roll. As you know the take up spool has a clutch that allows some slippage which compensates for the change in ratio between the toothed spool as the film increases the circumference. So maybe on this beat up old F3 the takeup spool clutch was jammed causing it to pull on the toothed sprocket and so pulling the film a bit too far on each wind. Now compared to my other (much better condition) F3, this old one has a bit more slack in the gears of both spools and the clutch is a bit tighter. Seems to make sense now that a stuck clutch was the issue and it freed up near the end of the film roll.