The (Canon) F-one-kenstein project...

[Laurent]

Same with me

It is important to me that all removed parts are on the table in the order in which I removed them. So I didn't use any little jars.

I have a box with compartments for parts that stay away from the camera for a long time, and the "iFixit" magnetic mat for some small parts, on which I can write what they are.

 

[88E30M50]

This has been a very interesting project to follow. This makes working on an A-1 look easy by comparison. You may be able to make a new spring for the self timer. A friend of mine restores old firearms from the 1800s and he often has to recreate springs that just don't exist outside of other complete handguns. He's done a number of Merwin revolvers from the 1850s and on some of those, he will make a spring from scratch and then temper it in a bath of molten lead. I don't know how you would make a spring as large as the one you need but it mght be possible.

 

[Laurent]

This has been a very interesting project to follow. This makes working on an A-1 look easy by comparison. You may be able to make a new spring for the self timer. A friend of mine restores old firearms from the 1800s and he often has to recreate springs that just don't exist outside of other complete handguns. He's done a number of Merwin revolvers from the 1850s and on some of those, he will make a spring from scratch and then temper it in a bath of molten lead. I don't know how you would make a spring as large as the one you need but it mght be possible.

Thanks! Yes, I know it's technically feasible (but I would not dare using molten lead as a tempering fluid) but not sure it's worth it. Well, except for knowing I can do it... I'll think about it when the camera is in working order!

 

[Laurent]

well, it's been a long time but I'm still working on this.

I spent the last weeks fighting with an Arduino, some photo-transistors, an LCD display, and I now have a somewhat functional shutter tester. I may share the design if you're interested (that will be when I'm finished with it so I hope you're not in a hurry).

Today I could check the speeds again and finally the speeds up to 1/60 are OK, then the higher ones tend to be too fast, until 1/1000 and 1/2000 which do no trigger the left part of the sensor. This confirms the shutter capping.

I measured the travel times for the two curtains, and what I get is that the first curtain crosses in 11ms, and the second takes 10, so this is consistent with what I'm seeing. I have to check the program as I guess that these integer values likely mean I'm rounding or truncating and the difference might be slightly different (no pun intended). At the moment, modeling this is a spreadsheet confirms the difference in travel time might not be exactly 1ms.

(the difference here is what I measure vs what I compute, not the speeds accuracy)

I also noticed that the "rolling shutter" effect happens also on my laptop's display, so this could be a quick and dirty check of a shutter's speeds.

The plan for the coming days is to improve my slow and dirty build of a shutter tester, check the exact travel times, and devise a way to make them equal. My guess is that I should find a way to "untighten" the second curtain, so that it does not try to overpass its brother.

If you have thoughts about this, I'll be happy to hear from you!

 

[Andreas Thaler]

Respect, you are pursuing several projects at the same time

Do you already have an overview of what needs to be done on your F-1?

 

[Laurent]

I'm not sure it deserves respect, it's sometimes close to a pathology

At the moment, the plan would be to
- improve my program so that I get more precise travel times.
- based on this measurement, carefully unwind the second curtain spring, then retighten it carefully to have the two curtains travel at the same speed.
- when this is done, I guess it will only be time to fiddle with the eccentrics to fine tune the speed, as they look pretty accurate at the moment (below 1/60th it spot-on, the 1/15 for example is 1/14.97)

I'm just unsure whether un-tightening the spring is feasible/a good idea, but my in-house expert (aka my son) already has an idea...

 

[Laurent]

One of the issues of multiple projects is focus is... varying! So F-one-kenstein did not progress a lot in the last months.

Anyway, I spent some time on it this week, and I think I made progress on the shutter capping, simply by lubricating the shutter curtains' rollers...

I'm currently struggling with a self-timer that does not want to couple at the right position of the lever... so I guess I have to have a look at said lever, but this will be for another day...