Hi all,
I've recently been given a Nikon F4S. It used to belong to a family friend who was a professional photographer. It's been used a lot, judging by the cosmetics, and possibly dropped as there's some damage to the viewfinder (the illumination panel is pushed in a bit). It's been in a shed until it came to me so the outside's a bit dirty. The inside's clean and dry though.
Fresh batteries. Electronics seem fine - it turns on, LCD/LED shows appropriate messages when different modes are selected (including focus confirmation, though I don't have an AF lens for it). All modes appear to work, including metering selection on the viewfinder. Film winds on correctly (well it does now - I think some of my cleaning cleared up some of the sensor contacts).
However, on pressing the shutter button fully, the shutter doesn't fire, the mirror doesn't flip up, and the aperture doesn't get stopped down. The film does get advanced one frame, but the status light flashes (indicating a sequence error, I believe). Doing this with the lens off, there's a slight wiggle of the stop-down armature, but that's the only movement.
So I have a few questions, since I'm pretty new to this camera:
1. Are combined shutter/mirror/aperture issues common for the F4?
2. To an experienced F4 user, does this seem mechanical or electronic? Or too hard to say? I'm kind of suspecting a misalignment of the mechanism, but most of my experience is with more mechanical cameras so idk
3. Is there a single point of failure among those three components, such that e.g. if the mirror isn't raised the shutter can't fire, or something?
4. Is it possible to read the EEPROM data without the fancy tool thing?
Thanks in advance!
I've recently been given a Nikon F4S. It used to belong to a family friend who was a professional photographer. It's been used a lot, judging by the cosmetics, and possibly dropped as there's some damage to the viewfinder (the illumination panel is pushed in a bit). It's been in a shed until it came to me so the outside's a bit dirty. The inside's clean and dry though.
Fresh batteries. Electronics seem fine - it turns on, LCD/LED shows appropriate messages when different modes are selected (including focus confirmation, though I don't have an AF lens for it). All modes appear to work, including metering selection on the viewfinder. Film winds on correctly (well it does now - I think some of my cleaning cleared up some of the sensor contacts).
However, on pressing the shutter button fully, the shutter doesn't fire, the mirror doesn't flip up, and the aperture doesn't get stopped down. The film does get advanced one frame, but the status light flashes (indicating a sequence error, I believe). Doing this with the lens off, there's a slight wiggle of the stop-down armature, but that's the only movement.
So I have a few questions, since I'm pretty new to this camera:
1. Are combined shutter/mirror/aperture issues common for the F4?
2. To an experienced F4 user, does this seem mechanical or electronic? Or too hard to say? I'm kind of suspecting a misalignment of the mechanism, but most of my experience is with more mechanical cameras so idk
3. Is there a single point of failure among those three components, such that e.g. if the mirror isn't raised the shutter can't fire, or something?
4. Is it possible to read the EEPROM data without the fancy tool thing?
Thanks in advance!