I finally found out why those old Pentax K1000s smell like that when you open them up

Was cleaning out a K1000 I got from a garage sale for $15. Smelled like old grease and something else. Looked it up on a forum from 2008. Turns out it's the foam light seals breaking down. Something about the rubber compound they used back then. Always wondered why my dad's old camera smelled the same way. Anyone else notice that or am I just weird?

3 comments

3 Comments

piper_burns25d ago

Old foam seals turning into sticky goo, classic Pentax problem. I've got a K1000 that smells like an old lady's purse mixed with a wet dog, it's wild. My dad had one too and I remember cracking it open as a kid thinking I'd find a dead mouse in there or something. Nope, just 80s rubber decay, which honestly might be worse. Probably says a lot about my life that I'm sitting here sniffing camera foam instead of doing literally anything productive.

felixfisher25d ago

I smell like " plus "camera foam" is my new band name honestly. But here's something nobody talks about - that rotting foam is actually eating away at the mirror bumpers underneath. Check yours, bet they're turning into black tar. Causes light leaks you won't notice until you develop a roll. Pull the foam out with tweezers, clean with isopropyl, replace with light seal foam from a craft store dirt cheap. Saves the camera another thirty years.

victorb1715d ago

@felixfisher nailed it with that black tar finding. Same thing happened on my old Canon AE-1 Program, the mirror bumper foam turned into this sticky sludge that actually dripped down onto the mirror itself. Had to carefully scrape it off with a plastic spudger and q-tips dipped in lighter fluid, took forever but the light leaks stopped completely. The craft store foam trick works great, just make sure you get the self-adhesive kind or use a tiny bit of rubber cement. Amazing how such a small fix keeps these old cameras running like new.