Copal 0 shutter arm not returning to its resting position

**brbo** · 6-Jul-2015, 10:32

Newbie in LF here.

I got a Rodenstock Grandagon 90/6.8 with Copal 0 shutter from eBay a couple of months ago. Not knowing this stuff I thought everything was OK, until I developed first film yesterday (it took me some time to get LF camera, holders, find time to shoot...).

Shots with long exposure times were OK, those with shorter times were blurry. After thinking about it for a while I came to conclusion that it has to be shutter vibration. I wasn't paying attention in the field when shooting but now I see that when I cock the shutter the shutter arm doesn't return to its resting position and when the shutter is tripped the arm starts moving to its resting position and stops there with quite a bang. Whoa! There's my source of vibration.

OK, so I can manually move the arm to its resting position after cocking the shutter (unless camera is positioned in such a way that arm would fall back to its cocking position), but obviously this is not ideal.

I guess a spring is broken/missing. Any idea how hard a fix is this (cost, recommended repair man in EU?)? Any other unwanted side effect apart from vibration due to this?

Thanks!

**koh303** · 6-Jul-2015, 12:18

The return spring sometimes pops off, or is broken.
There is an ecxcellent Copal #0 video on youtube.
If the spring arm is still there, you are all set. If its broken, you are better off manually moving the arm back. The cost to replace, and time to do it your self will be FAR more then getting another, working shutter.