A fixed lens on my bench changed how I check shutters now

Picked up a beat up Kiev 4 at an estate sale in Portland last month, and the sticky shutter had me fooled for 2 hours until I realized it was the aperture blades binding, not the curtains. Has anyone else run into a misdiagnosis like that where the actual fault was a completely different mechanism?

2 comments

2 Comments

tessaperry1d agoTop Commenter

Honestly, I think you might've had it right the first time. Curtains act up way more than aperture blades on those Kievs, and sticking blades usually show up as uneven exposures, not a full jam. Sounds like you just got impatient and flipped the blame, maybe the real fix was giving the whole thing a good CLA instead of picking one part.

kimw571d ago

Aw man, @tessaperry, I gotta stop you right there. I hear what you're saying, but I watched that Kiev jam up on the bench, and it was the aperture blades, plain and simple. The curtain timing was spot on, I checked it with a scope before I even opened the body. Sticking blades can totally cause a full stop if they overlap and catch each other, not just uneven frames. And yeah, a CLA might've fixed it, but that's a whole different job than swapping out a bent blade set. I got the shutter moving again in about twenty minutes once I replaced the bad part, so blaming my patience is a bit off the mark. Maybe your experience with these cameras has been different, but I've seen this exact failure mode more than once.