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View Full Version : Not a Good day, not a good one at all..



domenico Foschi
6-Sep-2006, 21:32
Well, there I was after 1 1/2 hours of Southern California freeway traffic at my destination: Newport Beach.
I had decided to shoot some beach scenes, waves and whatever would knock at the door.
I park the car, open the rear doors where I have my backpack, old manfrotto tripod and my speedgraphic.
As I always do, I position the speedgraphic on the hood of the car, reach for the back pack which I wear, and the tripod on my left shoulder.
I go for the speedgraphic and I see smoke coming out of it! While I was noticing this, a car with two young people park next to me and I think, "Nah, that was the smokefrom these guys car".
The engine of the car is now off, I look at my camera and I see smoke again!
Let me tell you, at the moment I was questioning reality, I had no idea what was happening when I saw that the smoke was coming from inside the camera.
Then I started to have a backflash of when I was about 25 when my first FTB went in...smoke.
I take off the petzval that was attached to it and...sure thing, the curtain was burning; for the second time in my life I had put the lens straight toward the sun which burned the curtain in a metter of seconds.
SOOO, lesson, never position a camera with fabric curtain perpendicular to the sun rays, and to be more sure always keep the shutter in the 0 position when it comes to a spreed graphic.

Back to ebay, I guess...

Frank Petronio
6-Sep-2006, 21:44
Wow, I always thought that was an urban ledgend... sorry.

Capocheny
6-Sep-2006, 21:58
Hi Domenico,

That sun must have been hot, hot, hot!

Yikes!

Sorry to hear of your misfortune!

Cheers

photographs42
7-Sep-2006, 06:39
Bummer! Were you able to salvage any of it? If it was only the curtain, the camera can still function with any lens that has a shutter.
Jerome

Jim Galli
7-Sep-2006, 07:17
So Dagor 77 was telling the truth in all those ads?

Mark Sampson
7-Sep-2006, 07:53
I did that once to my Leica. Got it fixed and fifteen years later the camera's still in service. I kept the burnt shutter curtain as a reminder... lenscaps do have a purpose!

domenico Foschi
7-Sep-2006, 11:45
Yes, Jim, I'd rather have "etched"a sheet of hp5 instead of seeing a hole the size of a silver dollar in the curtain.
I wonder if I could just patch it....

Kevin Crisp
7-Sep-2006, 11:58
Done right a small patch can fix this more or less permanently. I had it happen with a Leica once and after 20 years of use the patch was still going strong.

Donald Qualls
9-Sep-2006, 18:09
Also worth nothing, with the Speed Graphic, is that a hole in the curtain will only affect use of the slits on either side; if the hole is between, say, slits B and C, use of T, A, and D will be unaffected because the burned area won't be in front of film either before or after exposure. For that matter, one does occasionally see replacement curtains for these, and a good worker might even be able to replace one panel in the existing curtain, if you can't get a satisfactory result from a patch.

A carefully applied patch is the first thing to try, though...