Mamiya 7 - Film Smear / Blank Frames

[crispair]

Hey Guys,

I recently picked up a Mamiya 7 from eBay and I'm getting an issue with the film. It appears to smear a shot and then proceed by having the next shot completely exposed. I'm not very good at describing things so i've attached an image of my most recent roll below.

At first when this happened on B&W, i thought it was my development technique, not feeing the film correctly onto the spool. So i threw some colour film in the camera and got back similar / worst results from the shop.

Any idea what i might be doing wrong?

 

[nhchen]

I would guess that the shutter in the lens probably needs to get serviced.
Maybe you can see what's going on by looking at the shutter firing and advancing the camera without any film in it.
Nathan

 

[EdSawyer]

The shutter won't dry-fire with the back open, so don't bother trying. Agreed it looks like an issue with film advance. Good luck, it's a fabulous camera when it's working right.

 

[john_s]

The shutter won't dry-fire with the back open, so don't bother trying. Agreed it looks like an issue with film advance. Good luck, it's a fabulous camera when it's working right.

It should dry-fire with the back open. Seeing if the shutter appears to operate at various speeds would be a start. I assume that in the colour neg scan above that you took 10 frames. I agree with a post above that it looks at first sight like it might have something to do with a film advance issue, combined with a shutter issue (maybe light meter). When you wound on the film at the end of your 10 exposures did you notice if it took many strokes of the winder? The similarity of the first batch of exposed frames/overlapping frames and the second batch has me puzzled. Did you have the exposure set on automatic? I wonder if manually selected speeds might have been different. I'm just thinking aloud: if there was a big problem with the meter in automatic mode could you have got these results? (Some extremely overexposed, some not exposed?)

 

[crispair]

Thanks! All great ideas. Sorry yeah I cut the scan off at the end there (I only have an A3 scanner and i was sick of stitching the images together), so it looks like it wasn't advancing correctly. Good spot though!

I threw in a sacrificial roll and set it 1 second shutter speed, just to see if the leaf shutter was opening. Nope! Stuck closed, which explains the later part of the roll. Seems like the old girl had enough for a few shots and has given up on me. The weird thing is, there is still a shutter sound coming out of the body?

I tried cleaning the contacts between the lens and the body, but it didn't help. Maybe the fully exposed shots were just that the blades were stuck open?

Next step is to send it to the repairers and see if they can breath some life back into it. Thanks everyone for all your help though.

 

[john_s]

..... The weird thing is, there is still a shutter sound coming out of the body?....

I know that sound well. It sounds like a shutter but it's not. It is some kind of switch/circuit, maybe with a magnet, which is part of the interlock system that prevents winding on the film if an exposure has not taken place. It's a common repair needed for the previous model the Mamiya 6, because if it doesn't click (because it's stuck/faulty), then you can't wind the film on for the next exposure. Giving the camera a (gentle) thump can help it happen. (Not a problem with you camera though)