Me too-light leaks-don't feel alone, Anoldsock

[kowen]

Got my first roll of film back from my IIIC..."whaaaannh'" aka Lucille Ball, but I do love the little camera, really enjoyed shooting with it and guessing the exposures. I took a second look at the shutter curtains, they do show a little wear, but you can't really tell how much until your film comes back.

I'm gonna send it in, the light leaks are the same at every frame-like pinholes, also looks like a sticky shutter at times, look at the 2 shots side by side, those are at an arts & crafts fair.
Hopefully can still get new shutters and repair, cla as needed the rest. Here is a crop of the index sheet-not the best scan, and the two fair pictures side by side.


I've emailed Youxin, waiting to hear from him, get his address to see where to ship my camera to. Sent an email with these shots to help describe the situation.

 

[Luddite Frank]

Kowen,

The "sparklies" sprinkled across your pics look like bad shutter curtains to me...

My III-f started doing the same sort of thing, and I was blaming the lens for "flare"... then one day I was playing around with the camera and looked at the curtains and saw they were quite crackly.

I have been using the same lens on another body for several months now, w/o a trace of flare...

There are several good people out there who repair Screw-mount Leicae: Youxin has a good rep, as do DAG and Golden Touch.

Good luck !

Luddite Frank

 

[mflannery]

Light leak

Light leak

I just sent my IIIf to Youxin for a complete overhaul plus curtain replacement. Total turnaround time from Oregon to Massachusetts and back was six days. Amazing.
Mike Flannery

 

[anoldsock]

Ah, I love light leaks, JK. When I was looking around the web, from what I saw it seemed like those starry looking light leaks came from a cracked curtain. I shot Youxin an e-mail and his prices seemed very reasonable (definitely a lot less than what I was expecting for a CLA) and his turn around time is excellent (I was told that Sherry had a few months of backlog, yikes!). Being said it may cost more to fix a shutter. Another alternative I found while surfing the web is that there is a DIY fix where you apply some kind of black gooey substance, and that seals up your curtains temporarily, can anyone else comment on this?

Anyway, I was ready to package up my Leica and send it in to Youxin, but when I took it back to the dealer that sold it to me, they agreed to do the work for free.

I love the how compact the Leica is, hopefully yours won't be out of commission for too long. Good luck!

 

[kowen]

Thanks anoldsock, hopefully I won't miss it too much while it's off for repair and checkup. It's good that your camera dealer will repair your camera, I'll go ahead and send mine in today or tomorrow. I'd spoken to Youxin-very nice guy, gracious-mentioning while it's there if he sees anything else besides the shutter curtains and cla, go ahead and do it, but I think those two steps will take care of the camera and what looks like now and then the sticky shutter. He commented on the mechanical aspect of these cameras and it's simplicity, two things that are a big plus with me as far as these rangefinders go.

Frank, thanks to these forums I've checked DAG, Sherry, Steve's, Focal Point-got in touch with John about possible future lens work, and a couple of other places' websites. RFF has been pretty helpful, the gallerys are great.

Mike-that was pretty quick, good to hear.