Yashica GSN shutter / meter question

[trf199]

Apologies if this has been asked before, can't seem to get search to work in the forum..

Have just bought an electro 35 GSN. Seems to be in very good condition. Meter lights were a bit flickery when pressing the shutter down to start with but the contacts seem to have cleaned themselves now after multiple presses.

The question I have is that as you squeeze down the shutter release it first enters a range where it will show you whether the shot will be overexposed, then it leaves this range and enters a range where it shows you whether it will be a slow exposure. There is also a gap between these two ranges.

So the sequence of squeezing can result in red - blank - fire, blank - yellow - fire or blank - blank - fire. There is no place in the travel of the shutter release where both the yellow and red lights have the ABILITY to come on (dependent on the scene of course).

This seems ok, but will perhaps take a bit of getting used to. It's strange in that you could be pressing it the required amount for the yellow light, change the aperture but never be told if it goes overexposed unless you release the aperture up to the red range.

Is this the way that they all work or does mine have a problem?

Thanks,


Tom F

 

[john neal]

Tom,

That's right - no light = correct exposure. Because of the way the sliding fingers and contacts are arranged, and the fact that the circuit is entirely analogue, you will get the red light with less depression of the shutter button, compared to the yellow light. providing the lights go out before the shutter fires and that you can get progessively longer shutter opening with smaller apertures, all is in order.

You should get a nice clunk as you start to wind the film advance (about 15 to 20 degrees), this is significant in terms of the pad of Death. No clunk is bad, as is a very metallic clack - both mean the pad needs replacing.

 

[Farace]

I'm glad someone else asked about this, as I was starting to think I had an intermittent circuit in mine. Now I can drop that from my list of things to worry about.