Shoutout to the guy who taught me about shutter curtain pinholes

I had a customer bring in a Canon FTb last month complaining about light leaks on every frame. I cleaned the seals and checked the mirror bumper but the problem was still there. After staring at the shutter for 20 minutes I finally saw a tiny pinhole near the bottom edge of the second curtain. Turns out a lot of these old cloth shutters get microscopic burns from the sun hitting the lens at the wrong angle. Anyone else run into this and have a good method for patching them besides replacing the whole curtain?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_brooke2d ago

Wait, sun burns are a myth?! That totally changes how I've been diagnosing these!

riley_king162d ago

Actually those aren't from the sun hitting the lens, they're from the curtain sitting in the same spot for years and the fabric degrading. The sun burn thing is a myth that keeps floating around. A tiny dab of liquid electrical tape on the inside of the curtain does the trick for patching them.