Appreciation post: my dad told me to always check the mirror foam on old SLRs

He ran a shop in Cincinnati for 30 years and said the foam turns to goo and can jam the mirror. I ignored it on a Nikon FE2 that came in last month, just cleaned the shutter. The customer called back two days later with a stuck mirror. Had to eat the cost of a full teardown to fix my own mess. That simple check would have saved me three hours and a free repair. Anyone else have a basic tip they learned the hard way?

3 comments

3 Comments

jesse_fisher1mo ago

That's a perfect example of how the simplest advice is often the hardest earned. It reminds me of mechanics who say the first step is always checking the oil, even if the customer says the engine is just noisy. We skip the basic stuff because we assume the problem has to be more complex, and it almost always bites us. Your dad had thirty years of seeing that exact failure, and it's wild how often that institutional knowledge gets ignored until you learn the lesson yourself. Makes you wonder what other tiny, five-second checks we're all skipping right now.

morgan_ramirez1mo ago

My old boss used to say the first step is always checking if the thing is plugged in.

anthonymurray1mo ago

My friend spent hours debugging a dead monitor.