I've got a weird problem with the XA I recently acquired; sometimes
(rarely) it'll open the shutter for way too long -- so if the meter says
1/1000th, when I press the release, instead of a single click sound, there's
a definite click..click about (I'm guessing) 1/10th of a second apart. It's
almost like the sticky magnet on my OM10, but this is an XA so it can't be
that..
Weird things, though:
0. Of course, I can't reproduce this now.. [1]
1. _really_ strange -- if I use self-timer, it works fine, and seems to
convince the thing to start working again
2. The one image I can find that looks like this happened seems to be
exposed relatively well, which is even more peculiar because I can't see how
the aperture could have shut down to make up for the too-long exposure time;
though perhaps it's just the processors making up for it -- it's definitely
blurred as if I had hand-shake for a lot more shutter-open time than I
remember having when taking that shot. If you see what I mean.
3. It's got new (SR44) batteries in it, so I don't think it's that.
4. It seemed to get better when I changed the roll of film.
Now I write this, I'm almost thinking it could be the mis-loaded film
bulging in weird places and pressing on the back of the shutter and keeping
it from opening properly; does this sound at all plausible? Not sure why
self-timer would fix it in that situation, though.
thanks,
-- dan
[1] and of the films I shot where I know this was going on, I managed to
mis-load them all -- of the first four rolls I shot, only one came out at
all, the other three all had the entire 24 shots squeezed onto the first
frame-and-a-bit's worth of emulsion. I've got the hang of it now, but boy,
what a pain; next time I'll make sure to check the first roll before doing
anything else.
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