Part of frame black

I've been using an old Minolta SRT101 lately and I've noticed on 80% of the shots the right side of the frame is blackened. But on some, very few, shots they appear perfect. This is very disheartening since this is one of my grandfather's old cameras. What is causing this? Thanks.

hammy said:

I've been using an old Minolta SRT101 lately and I've noticed on 80% of the shots the right side of the frame is blackened. But on some, very few, shots they appear perfect. This is very disheartening since this is one of my grandfather's old cameras. What is causing this? Thanks.

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It is called 'shutter taper' and it is not unusual on an older camera. Totally fixable, you need to send it off to one of the several well-regarded repair facilities around the US. At the same time that they fix the shutter tapering problem, they should give it a CLA (clean, lube, adjust), make sure the shutter speeds are all within spec, and you can ask them to recalibrate the meter so that it works with newer silver oxide batteries instead of the outlawed mercury batteries. The SRT101 is a lovely camera, worth saving.

FWIW, John Titterington (jtcamera@aol.com) routinely adjusts the shutter and recalibrates the meter when he CLAs a camera like an SRT. He CLA'd all three of my SRT bodies last year (I do 'em all every five years whether they need it or not).

In flash photos it can also be caused by improper sync, either by using a too high shutter speed or by faulty flash sync.

Thanks for the replies.
Well It wasn't a flash synch thing since I wasn't using flash.

About how much does it cost to get the camera fixed up? Luckily this isn't my only camera, just a side camera I use once in a while. I do like it a lot though.

Curtain speeds are out of adjustment, which means that at High shutter speeds, the slit is closing up during exposure, causing black (clear) areas on the film.