[Leica] Burning a hole in the shutter

[graham at geebeephoto.com (Graham Battison)]

 From: "Peter Klein" <pklein@2alpha.net>
Subject: [Leica] Burning a hole in the shutter


> On another list, the subject of cloth vs. metal shutters has come up.  The
> danger of the sun burning a hole in the shutter curtain was cited as an
> advantage of the metal shutter.
>
> In over 30 years of using Leicas, I have never burned a hole in my shutter
> (knock on wood, ptu-ptu-ptu!) .  I wonder how long it actually takes to
> happen.  Nowadays I often set my lens to close focus when I'm facing the
> sun on sunny days, just in case.  But I never did this before, and I never
> had a problem.
>
> I suspect normal body movement usually moves the sun's image around enough
> so that the shutter doesn't "catch."  On bright days, lenses are usually
> stopped down, so less energy reaches the curtain.  I suspect that people
> have to leave the camera lying still in the sun for an appreciable length
> of time for the shutter to "catch." And probably the lens has to be fairly
> wide open and focused on or near infinity.
>
> I'm curious how much of a danger this really is.  Has anyone heard of
> someone actually testing this out--hopefully on an already bad
> curtain!  :-)  Does anyone have any firsthand information about such a
> test?  Or, would anyone who actually burned a hole in their shutter be
game
> enough to tell us how it happened?
>
> --Peter
>
> P.S.  I have seen one Leica with a burnt hole  in the shutter.  The
> original shutter on one of my cameras had a little patch over such a
> hole.  I don't know how it happened, because the previous owner said he
> bought it that way.  I happily used the camera until one of the curtain
> strings failed, at which point I had both curtains replaced.  It worked
> fine before, and it works fine now.
>
> _______________________________________________

Hi Peter,

When I bought my used M6 it came complete with holes in the curtain. It was
only holed in the curtain in place when the shutter was cocked so the previo
us owner must have left it lying around lens up with the shutter cocked. I
was amazed that I couldn't see the holes in a darkened room shining a torch
from the other side until I did as Sonny Carter suggested and got a loupe on
it. You will see from the pics that the 'light pattern' is the same in all
shots but varies in intensity depending on how long I took to fire the
shutter after cocking it.

http://www.geebeephoto.com/temp/Holed_Curtain.html


Graham
http://geebeephoto.com

http://www.geebeephoto.com/temp/Holed_Curtain.html