Help--XA Won't Advance/Fire

[sooner]

Hi Folks,

I took my handy if not trusty XA away for the weekend, and found it wouldn't take a picture. I couldn't advance the film and the shutter button wouldn't work. Tried the timer, and after ten seconds the shutter did not fire but I could do the self-timer again. I took the film out and opened up the back, but the film advance is jammed. Tried moving the inner mechanism manually, and it did move, but the advance still didn't move and the shutter won't fire. Any suggestions? Damn, and I just sent off a Minox 35 to DAG!

 

[bmattock]

Hi Folks,

I took my handy if not trusty XA away for the weekend, and found it wouldn't take a picture. I couldn't advance the film and the shutter button wouldn't work. Tried the timer, and after ten seconds the shutter did not fire but I could do the self-timer again. I took the film out and opened up the back, but the film advance is jammed. Tried moving the inner mechanism manually, and it did move, but the advance still didn't move and the shutter won't fire. Any suggestions? Damn, and I just sent off a Minox 35 to DAG!

Dead battery? Failing that, I am afraid it may be a goner.

EDIT: Or it may be the electronic switch on the clamshell - it thinks the clamshell is closed when it is open. Still a hassle.

 

[sooner]

Bill, the battery is definitely not dead. In fact, I noticed the light meter lost a couple stops of light when I pushed the shutter button down hard, trying to engage the shutter. I did notice a couple of weeks before this that sometimes the shutter button wouldn't fire, but when I opened the clamshell with more vigor it worked. So what's this about the sensor making the shutter think the camera is still closed? That sounds promising, if it's easy to fix?

 

[kuzano]

The shutter is not firing... which is why the

The shutter is not firing... which is why the

advance wheel won't turn. Either the clamshell is not fully openin, or it's not tripping the switch inside that lets the shutter trip. If you look in the little rangefinder window on the front, to the left of the viewfinder window, is the little flag opening that opens the patch portion of the rangefinder. The common occurrance is that you should feel a slight click over a notch when the clamshell fully opens. At the same time the little rotating blind in the rangefinder should open, and the switch to the shutter should become active. An inactive shutter locks the advance wheel.

Try to give the clamshell a bit more nudge open. I seem to recall that the clamshell trips the switch in the bottom track that the cover rides in, so if the top is fully open, make sure the bottom of the clamshell is open as well.

Hope that makes sense. I had a couple of XA's that seemed to have lost the notchy feel when fully open, so I had to make sure the door was open before they would fire.

Also, as I recall, if you take the bottom off, you can pry the bottom of the clamshell out of the track and pull it forward to lift forward and up off the camera. Don't do that unless it's a last resort. I took a couple of these apart and they are not friendly when stuff starts popping out at you.

 

[rogue_designer]

sometimes the button gets a bit warped and cannot engage the switch properly.

There are some tutorials around on replacing the switch, or repairing parts of it with epoxy to get it back in shape. I'll see if I can find one.

 

[sooner]

Thanks for the comments. I checked and pulling the clamshell back DID open that little window, so it should have fired, right? There just isn't any way I can slide the clamshell back or around any more without ripping the darn thing off. But I guess there isn't much downside to that, now, is there?

 

[rogue_designer]

Still sounds like a shutter button issue (not tripping the shutter) rather than a clamshell, interlock issue.

 

[TheHub]

I had the same problem with mine. The shutter lubricant had gummed up making the camera stick in rewind-mode. I had it CLAed and it worked again perfectly.

It's either that or the batteries are no-good.

A non-firing XA is quite a common problem. Check out the XA Users Collective on Flickr for more disucssions about it.