FED Curtains / Normal light leak?

[myequation]

😕

My two latest cameras:

FED 2 & FED 5

With any new camera that I acquire I always do basic checks before "wasting film"

Theses are my first FEDs my only real Russian camera experience is Kievs,


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Please view the pic to better understand my question.
Red dots are for illustration purposes.

On both my feds I noticed that if I shined a bright flashlight into the lens and advanced the shutter I could see a faint trickle of light bleeding from between those two metal slats as they passed by. I can only see it at an extreme angle,

Is this normal? I can't see how. but I do have two feds with the exact same issue..

Help me

 

[fidget]

If you try hard, you can see this in most FSU cams with curtains of this type.
I've certainly had pictures spoiled by light leaks getting through here as I wound on to the next frame. I have perhaps, three cams which do this, so far. One at least because the curtains were replaced without getting the overlap dead-on (I did this).

Some cams are better than others and some could be improved by ensuring that the gap is minimal and the shields "hold" the curtain laths together better as they move overlapped.
I now try to keep the lens out of line with bright scenes as I wind on, but this is surprisingly difficult to keep to, so those cams tend not to get used.

I've got a few cams which have not shown this problem, but then I "try" to keep the habit of winding on carefully on all cams, so they could return a faulty neg sometime yet.

I think that what you see is normal and those cams may not let light through in practice. It could be worth deliberately winding on with the lens pointing to a bright scene wide open, just to test for it on a couple of otherwise unexposed frames. Don't let it put you off using them.
I had posted about this some time ago. No-one else who posted had seen this.

Dave

 

[Kozhe]

Interesting... Can´t you solve this increasing a little bit the tension of the 2nd curtaing?

 

[ZorkiKat]

Yes, that leak is common with many FED and Zorki with metal laths. FED-3 and FED-5 are more prone to this sort of leakage.

Most of the "mysterious" vertical-running (on an horizontal picture) ghost streaks are caused by this so slight gap between the metal laths. Leaks such as these occur when
shooting in bright light, or when the lens is wide open, or if winding is done slowly in those situations.

No, tensioning will not cure it.

However an easy fix can be done- I have been gluing tiny strips of shutter curtain cloth on the back (film side) surface of the closing curtain's lath. The strips are from the rebates left over after shutter curtain repairs and are of the right width. The strip of curtain cloth will act as a gasket to close the tiny gap.

 

[myequation]

However an easy fix can be done- I have been gluing tiny strips of shutter curtain cloth on the back (film side) surface of the closing curtain's lath. The strips are from the rebates left over after shutter curtain repairs and are of the right width. The strip of curtain cloth will act as a gasket to close the tiny gap.

Exactly what I was thinking!
I'll give that a try