chuck wrote:
On Sun, 26 Feb 2012 11:14:17 -0800, "David Farber"
wrote:

I have a 7 year old Maxxum 7 film camera. Intermittently, when the
shutter is depressed the shutter doesn't click though you here some
softer noises instead. It's almost like the mechanism is staging for
fire but doesn't. When this happens, the lcd data display (remember
it's film so there's no image display) goes dead. Then I have to
power cycle the camera and it's fine. Usually it never misfires two
times in a row. The only drawback besides the inconvenience of
missing the photo and the time that is wasted is that after the
power cycling, the film automatically advances to the next frame
leaving one frame unexposed. I've found a workaround for this. This
camera has an individual frame rewind feature so I can actually
rewind the film one frame back to where it was before the shutter
misfire. Of course all of this is a big p.i.t.a. Swapping out
batteries, lenses, or changing metering, flash, or programming modes
makes no difference.

I was considering disassembling the camera in hopes of perhaps
finding a simple electronic or mechanical reason for this
intermittent failure. Perhaps a loose connector, a bad capacitor, or
something that should move easily but has started to get sluggish.
Camera stores really don't repair these anymore so I don't have much
to lose. Anyone have any experience with this?

Thanks for your reply.


A hobby of mine is repairing 35mm slr cameras. I have seen on camera
sites that there are 2 electrolytic caps that need to be replaced to
repair this problem. The Yahoo group"Camera fix" has threads on this
issue. I don't repair Minoltas so I don't know exactly where they are
located. I think one is under the top cover and one is under the
bottom. Chuck

Hi Chuck,

I removed the bottom cover today. There are no visible electronics there.
Just the plastic transport gears there that probably advance the film. There
is a small pc board off to the right side but it's buried in the chassis.
There appears to be a rather large capacitor on that board, perhaps for the
flash. When I turned the camera right-side-up with the bottom removed, some
gears fell out. You'd think they be fastened in there with a clip or
something. Anyway, I did notice that the hinged battery cover contains the
contact plate for the positive battery terminal. This terminal however is
not hard wired to the inside of the camera. There is a small copper wiper
which looks like what you'd find in an old vcr mode switch (the movable
part) that transfers the current from the battery plate to another part of
the camera and then there is yet another one of these copper wipers pushing
against the next conductive track. I used some alcohol to clean up the
contacts and then used a burnishing tool to hopefully improve the
connection. I'll load up a roll of film and see if that helped at all. I
don't look forward to taking the top part of the camera apart looking for
more failed electronics while springs, gears, and whatever else pops out.

Thanks for your reply.
--
David Farber
Los Osos, CA