Ran into a retired Nikon repair tech at a diner and he changed how I think about shutter curtains

I was at a small diner in Lancaster, PA last Saturday and sat next to an older gentleman who saw my shirt with camera gears on it. Turns out he spent 40 years repairing Nikon F series bodies for a rental house in New York. He told me most shutter curtain problems aren't from wear, but from people storing cameras with the shutter cocked. Said he saw hundreds of cameras with stretched curtains that could have been avoided just by firing the shutter before putting them away. Has anyone else heard this rule or is it just an old timer thing?

2 comments

2 Comments

riley_west1mo ago

Wait, does that include all mechanical shutters or just the older cloth ones?

bettys511mo ago

Gosh, mechanical shutters in general are a bit of a lottery, you know? It's like my old Pentax Spotmatic, that cloth shutter is on its last legs. But then my buddy has a modern Fuji with a mechanical shutter that sounds like a gentle whisper, so go figure. Honestly, I think the older cloth ones are the ones you really gotta baby, they just seem to gum up faster. Meanwhile, my camera's mechanical shutter is louder than a freight train in a library, but it's still ticking! So I guess it's a mixed bag, but definitely count the old cloth ones in the "handle with care" pile.