David Farber wrote:
Cydrome Leader wrote:
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?

cameras = serious PITA to fix. If it's not bad batteries, toss it.
It's not worth even looking at unless it has sentimental value or
something like that. You can probably get an exact replacement from
KEH for like $50 or something like that.

KEH has one for $165. For that price I thought I'd at least take it apart to
see what was going on inside. The thing I am unsure about is ruining any
light seals or being able to put back cables in their correct positions so
that everything fits together nicely at the end.

Thanks for your reply.

The light seals would tend to not be a problem, but 1980s japanese
electronics wiring probably will be. Stuff is crammed so tight into those
cameras that unsoldering all sorts of stuff tends to be a must.

I love fixing stuff, but the challenge of messing with a camera is pretty
up there. I've done work on cameras that belonged to dead folks so the
owner wanted to not toss it, and it's quite doable, but not easy, and can
require strange tools.

If you're just curious and don't mind just tossing the pile of parts you
end up with, it can be fun.