Help identify this light leak

[froyd]

The first frame of my latest roll had held a little surprise for me. Oh the joy of the latent image!

What was supposed to be a fun portrait of my daughter and I is marred by a light leak or odd flare in the upper right hand corner,

I have not owned my M4 long, but in the dozen or so rolls shot so far, I have never seen a similar problem. Also, none of the other frames on this roll showed anything like the streak on the first frame.

Given that the stray light appears on the first frame, I'm guessing it occurred during loading. However, due to the hard edge on this light leak, I'm wondering if it might have been caused by the back film door not being properly shut.

Anybody seen this type of problem before. Any suggestions to avoid it? I did get 25 frames out of this roll, so maybe I should have been less greedy and shot an extra blank frame at the start?


93250001 by kafe-pic, on Flickr

 

[tennis-joe]

I am no repair person but it does that to me on my M3's on the first frame. I usually advance the frame counter to 2 before I start shooting.
Joe

 

[ChrisN]

Light leak past the shutter curtain, through the track that the curtain rests in, at the bottom of the shutter curtain (top of the negative). Also commonly associated with changing lenses while not protecting the camera from strong light. There has been quite a few threads on this here. My M4 suffered the same, and was cured after an overhaul that included new shutter curtains. Not a film door problem, or the sprocket area of the film would also be burned.

see also: http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=73251

 

[Clancycoop]

I think I would say don't worry about it since it only happened on that one frame. Shoot two frames after closing the door and then shoot with confidence. An alternative is making your first shot knowing it might be ruined.