Canon 7 shutter curtain

[colyn]

I've seen several photos of the Canon 7 on ebay with what appears to be one metal curtain and one cloth curtain. 😱

How well will this camera work with that configuration? 😕

Why not replace both curtains instead of one? 😕

 

[NL2377]

Wow, never heard of that... though I'm not terribly up to par w/ what goes on in the cannon scene when it comes to rangefinders.

generally speaking, you will only see one of the shutter curtains though, unless in one image the shutter is cocked, and the other, it isn't. So maybe it just looks that way, and is in fact both metal?

 

[Mackinaw]

It may just look like the curtains are made of a different material. Often times, when you photograph the open back of a camera, the curtains will look to be a different tone of gray. Probably because different reflectivity or something.

As to whether a camera a camera can operate properly with a metal and cloth curtain, my guess is not. I'm sure the different weights would play havoc with shutter timing and other shutter dynamics.

Jim Bielecki

 

[colyn]

The cameras I am talking about the sellers stated in the description that one curtain had been replaced. I also saw one at a camera show a couple of years ago with one curtain cloth.

 

[Mackinaw]

Since Canon hasn't manufactured stainless steel curtains for the 7-series camera in years, it's not surprising that some camera tech used cloth instead. Still got to believe that this is not the ideal setup.

Karen Nakamura, on her website, makes mention of a Japanese company that will replace the stainless steel curtains of a 7 with titanium curtains. Pretty expensive though, at $500.00 a pop.

Jim Bielecki

 

[colyn]

Since Canon hasn't manufactured stainless steel curtains for the 7-series camera in years, it's not surprising that some camera tech used cloth instead. Still got to believe that this is not the ideal setup.

I would tend to agree with you here since the camera was originally designed with stainless steel curtains in mind and that changing that would probably affect performance to a degree.

However if you are going to change 1 you should go ahead and change both.

Karen Nakamura, on her website, makes mention of a Japanese company that will replace the stainless steel curtains of a 7 with titanium curtains. Pretty expensive though, at $500.00 a pop.

Jim Bielecki

I don't see where the cost would be worth it..

 

[John Shriver]

There's already a huge difference in mass between the opening and closing curtains on any Leica-type shutter. The spring tension is about 3 times higher on the opening curtain. So the subtle difference in the curtain masses between metal and cloth can be trivially nulled out with the curtain tension adjustments. Either one is over an order of magnitude lighter than the associated drum.

The only issue would be if there wasn't enough room for a cloth curtain. Indeed, the Aki-Asahai shutter curtain material is too thick for my Canon IV-SB2, I've sourced a thinner material to try in there next. But since a Canon 7 can run fine with a very rumpled curtain, I suspect there's more than enough room there.

The big disadvantage, of course, is that you can burn a hole in the cloth curtain...