lwe3207@acf4.UUCP (Lars Warren Ericson) (04/16/85)
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The winder on my Canon FT-b is getting, ah..., cranky. When towards the end
of a roll, something will tighten up, and the advance mechanism will skip
sprockets, resulting in frames running into each other. If I manually
advance the rewind and camera-open-up stem on the left side, this problem
doesn't happen. There appears to be some grayish oxidation on the rewind
stem.
Question: can I just dump some silicon grease on the rewind stem to make
this go away, or will this gunk up the camera?
Lars Ericson
Arpa: ericson@nyu
Usenet: {floyd,ihnp4}!cmcl2!csd1!ericsonwunder@wdl1.UUCP (05/03/85)
I would take the FTb to a repair shop. If the rewind crank shaft was not well lubricated, then the crank would be stiff, but the sprocket would still operate correctly, yes? The problem is down inside somewhere. One of my FTb's got sloppy framing and rough winding like this. Eventually, it didn't work at all. It sure did feel nice after I got it back from the shop, though. Lest everyone here think that FTb's fall apart, mine was used for college sports photography, about 10K exposures in 9 months. With the bionic thumb (couldn't afford F1's and motors), the camera took a real beating. Amateur cameras just wear out under professional use. This is a design decision, not a design flaw. If everything lasted as long as a Canon F1, everything would cost as much as a Canon F1. wunder
ron@wjvax.UUCP (Ron Christian) (05/13/85)
****
...........Amateur cameras just wear out under professional use.
This is a design decision, not a design flaw. If everything lasted as
long as a Canon F1, everything would cost as much as a Canon F1.
wunder
****
Very well put. This is probably the most important consideration
for picking out new equipment.
The only thing I could add is that even though someone might consider
him/herself an amateur, it's the *volume* of exposures that dictates
reliability. I only include this because I know of amateurs who wear
out plastic do-everythings with shocking regularity taking vacation
pictures.
It took me a while to realize that the traveler over there with the
top-of-the-line camera who obviously never had it off program mode
wasn't necessarily trying for snob appeal. He simply needed a camera
that would keep working no matter what.
--
__
Ron Christian (Watkins-Johnson Co. San Jose, Calif.)
{pesnta,twg,ios,qubix,turtlevax,tymix,vecpyr,certes}!wjvax!ron
"What do you mean you backed it up the wrong direction???"