Simular to what Bill suggested, take the camera, a flash, and no lens into
a dark room. Set it to 1/125, open the back, and fire at the wall, and if
it's working right you should see a full 35mm frame when the flash fires.
If it's too quick close your eyes and you should see the image burned into
your retina for the next couple minutes (and yes I have done this).
Another thing you can do is try timing the slower shutter speeds (1s, 2s,
4s are pretty easy). You might also examine the shutter when it fires and
when you wind for oil on the blades, or other funny stuff. Good luck!
Todd
At 11:19 PM 6/1/01 -0500, you wrote:
>Hi Bob & Cy,
>
>Don't know. The mirror appears to be hitting the foam everytime I trip the
>shutter, but I can't gauge if it is too fast or too slow. The foam looks
>fine. The mirror has a little dust on it and, possibly, may sit a fraction
>of a millimeter higher on one side in the down position but that might just
>be my eyes.
>
>Bob S. wrote:
>
>>Pure speculation, but is the mirror up at the right time?
>
>Cy Galley wrote:
>
>>Could it be a slow mirror?
>
>-----
>
>
>Hi Bill, Tom, & Francis,
>
>The shutter travels vertically, but I wasn't using flash. Tried Bill's
>suggestion of white wall dry firing-everything looks ok to me motion wise,
>but most of these shutter speeds are way too fast for me to track visually.
>I do see the whole aperature. I haven't tried it, but I don't think my
>flash is compatible with the ME Super.
>
>Bill Peifer wrote:
>
>>Hi Dan,
>>
>>Do the shutter curtains on this body run vertically? Looks a lot like flash
>>pictures that were taken at a shutter speed faster than the X-sync (assuming
>>your problem shots were taken with flash -- maybe a bad assumption??). Try
>>dry-firing the thing with the back off and no film in the camera, while
>>pointing at a nice flat white wall. Does the entire area of the focal plane
>>appear evenly illuminated to your eye, or are some of the shots funny
>>looking? Now try dry-firing again, but this time with a flash in place and
>>the shutter speed on X-sync (whatever it is for the ME Super -- 1/100 or
>>1/125 or whatever). How do these same shots look now? Evenly illuminated
>>or funny looking? Does it appear that your X-sync speed is really
>>synchronized with the flash?
>>
>>Hope this helps. Good luck!
>
>Tom Rittenhouse wrote:
>
>>If you were using flash, your shutter speed was above 1/125
>>Sec. The shutter on the ME series cameras moves vertically
>>across the film that is why the unexposed part is on the top
>>instead of the side.
>
>Francis Tang wrote:
>
>>My suspicion would be a dodgy shutter, since the blades run vertically on
>>the ME Super. Probably the opening set gets stuck before reaching the end
>>of the film area - likely, since the curtains run from the top of the
>>camera to the bottom, hence from the bottom of the frame to the top.
>
>-----
>
>Hi Aaron & Gerald,
>
>Guys, the shutter doesn't have any visible dents or anything like that.
>Aaron, they were different speeds as I was bracketing aperature for a lot
>of the same shots.
>
>Aaron Reynolds wrote:
>
>>Looks like the shutter. Does the shutter physically look okay when you
>>look at it? I bet those two shots were at different shutter speeds.
>
>Gerald Cermak wrote:
>
>>A slow mirror would put the black band on the bottom of the image, not the
>>top.
>>
>>I suspect the 2 shutter blade sets (open and close) are having problems.
>
>
>If anyone is still reading this far down, after I tried dry firing and
>visual inspection of the mechanicals and _still_ not having a clue, I
>decided to put another roll through the ME Super-shooting the same scene
>each time but moving systematically through the range of f stops on my A
>50/1.7. I'll take the film to Wal-Mart tomorrow and see if any pattern
>shows up on the prints.
>
>This is probably wishful thinking but, if it is the shutter or the mirror,
>is it possible that long storage slowed either of them down and a little
>re-use will limber them up?
>
>Thanks for all the suggestions,
>
>Dan Scott
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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