Pentacon Six Project. Step one – removing top plate and examining the shutter.

This evening I took my first steps to repair my Pentacon six by having a look at what was stopping the second curtain closing when the shutter is fired. To do that I had to remove the top plate of the camera, so I could examine it, and I’ve detailed the Pentacon Six strip down procedure here. I won’t give many more details than the pictures because it is all pretty self-explanatory and was actually quite easy.

Pentacon Six Strip Down

Pentacon Six strip down notes.

What I found when I got the top off was that the mechanics of the film advance and shutter speed dials were completely bone dry. In order to see how any of it worked, I partially re-assembled the film advance lever, so I could slip it over the shaft and cock the shutter. After I put a small amount of oil on the film advance side I cocked and fired the shutter several times and after about 5 or 10 actuations I started to see the second curtain come out after the first curtain completed its travel.

Once I saw this, I watched the mechanism with more detail and worked out the channel that the curtain was running in. In the pictures above, it is the circle in the middle of the film advance detail picture. I added a drop of oil in there and carried on firing the shutter and after another few goes the second curtain completed its travel! The only problem now was that there was quite a delay before the curtain moved. I spend a bit of time trying to work out why this was until I looked back at the pictures I’d taken and realised the shutter speed was set to 1sec!!!!

So, I reset the shutter to a faster speed and everything seemed fine – the shutter moves every time and the speeds seem close to being correct. In order to calibrate them I’m going to need to work out an idea to test them, but for the moment the fact that the shutter is at least working is good – except ……

Just as I was putting my tools away I held the camera up to the light and looked through the back of the camera against the light and I found that the second curtain leaks light 🙁 So it looks like I might need to get the shutter completely out of the camera and replace the shutter blind unless I can find any product that I can paint onto the shutter which will seal against light leak and still roll tightly up.

Any suggestions gratefully received.