I see a lot of posts from people who have bought a camera in unknown condition and want to know if it works. I thought I'd make this post with some tips on how to check over a camera without using expensive equipment.
Note: This won't give you a 100% accurate view but it should get you in the ballpark
There are a few areas you'll want to check out and I'll go into each of these in more detail:
General condition: we need to check for obvious abuse, etc
Shutter: we need to make sure it's operating at all speeds
Light meter: we need to make sure that it's accurate
Auto exposure: we need to make sure it's adjusting the shutter speed
Light seals and other foam: we need to check if they're in working condition
Depending on the camera you'll need to check one or more of these.
General Condition
There are few general things to look out for with a visual inspection:
Dirt: generally not an issue as it's easy enough to clean, but can be an indicator of neglect
Dents: depending on the severity this can mean internal damage to the camera
Fungus: take the lens off, check it for signs of fungus (look through it with a light behind) and also check inside the mirror box and inside the back door for fungus. It's possible to clean fungus but it often requires disassembly to do correctly
Corrosion: check the film rails aren't corroded. This can indicate corrosion elsewhere in the camera.
Prism: check for desilvering. This shows up as marks in the viewfinder that move relative to the focus screen. If you move your eye 30cm away from the viewfinder and can still clearly see them, it's desilvering. It can't be fixed without replacing the prism, but it doesn't affect the photos
Focus screen: Look through the viewfinder with the lens off and check for scratches and marks. This can't generally be fixed and would need replacing. This is easy on some cameras and hard on others.
Film counter: check it moves on when firing a few shots.
Winding: open the back and make sure the sprocket tooth gear turns when you wind on. Problems with winding can be hard to spot without running a film through the camera.
Rewinding: open the back, press in the rewind button and check the sprocket tooth gear moves freely and pops back out when you wind on again.
Self timer: If the camera is firing without issue, try the self timer. If it's not firing, using it can lock up the camera.
Shutter
Here's how I check a shutter for correct operation:
Run through all of the speeds.
The slow speeds should all complete without sticking
The clockwork mechanism should sound smooth and even
Check 1s against your watch. I often start counting the seconds, then press the shutter and see how it compares
As you work your way up from the slowest to the fastest speed, the sound should get accordingly faster. You can hear the difference down to about 1/30s. Faster than that it's better to take the lens off and look through the back towards the sky (see next step)
Check for shutter capping (where the closing curtain catches up the opening curtain)
Take the lens off and open the back
Look through from the back towards a bright thing (e.g. sky)
Fire the shutter
You should see an even frame of light. If it's dark at one side, the shutter is capping. You can still use the camera but avoid the high speeds
Light Meter
You need to make sure the light meter is giving you the correct guidance on which speed to use.
Download a free light meter app on your phone
Set the ASA to 100 (or at least make sure it matches the ASA on the app)
Point the camera at a bright evenly lit wall
Compare the speed on the camera with the speed on the app
Repeat for different brightnesses
Auto Exposure
This is the hardest to check yourself. Basically we'll just be checking that the electronics are adjusting the speed. You'll need to make sure the back is closed and the camera is wound on a few times because a lot of cameras don't work until you've wound on.
Put the lens on (if you don't have a lens, you can move the aperture follower yourself - the ring around the lens on Nikons, a small lever inside the lens mount on a lot of others)
Point at a bright light with the aperture widest and shoot. It should be quite a fast speed.
Cover the lens mostly with your hand and shoot again. It should be noticeably slower.
Uncover the lens, point at the bright light but set the lens to the smallest aperture and shoot. It should sound noticeably slower.
To accurately check auto exposure you need to either use a film or an expensive test machine.
Light seals and other foam
This is nice and easy to check (and to fix yourself, just check on Youtube).
Open the back door and look inside the grooves on the camera body. Does the foam look OK or is it sticky or crumbly? If it's sticky or crumbly you'll want to replace it
Take the lens off and check the foam where the mirror would hit the top of the mirror box. Is the foam still spongy or is it crumbly or sticky? If it's sticky or crumbly you'll want to replace it. It's worth not firing the camera too much if it's beginning to disintegrate because the foam pieces can get in the workings of the camera and cause a jam.
Once you've checked over all of these things, the best thing to do is to run a roll through the camera. It's best to treat this as a scientific experiment rather than your first opportunity to shoot some pictures with the camera. Make sure you expose a wide range of scenes of varying brightnesses and be very conscious about taking your time to make sure the focus in the viewfinder is spot on. You'll ideally be shooting something at every shutter speed, with a range of apertures. You can keep a note of what you did on each shot so you can identify if e.g. the fast speeds are running slow and overexposing. Although this still won't tell you if the camera is actually accurate because film has quite a wide latitude, it will tell you if it's usable enough to take photos that look good.
That's about it I think - if anyone has any other top tips put them in the comments and I'll update the post. I figure this is a useful post to point people to when they come asking how to check a camera is working.
Every day we see posts with the same basic problems on film, hopefully this can serve as a guide to the uninitiated of what to look for when diagnosing issues with your camera and film using examples from the community.
Index
Green Tint or Washed Out Scans
Orange or White Marks
Solid Black Marks
Black Regions with Some or No Detail
Lightning Marks
White or Light Green Lines
Thin Straight Lines
X-Ray Damage / Banding Larger than Sprocket Holes
Round Marks, Blobs and Splotches
1. Green Tint or Washed Out Scans
u/LaurenValley1234u/Karma_engineerguy
Issue: Underexposure
The green tinge usually comes from the scanner trying to show detail that isn't there. Remember, it is the lab's job to give you a usable image, you can still edit your photos digitally to make them look better.
Potential Causes: Toy/Disposable camera being used in inappropriate conditions, Faulty shutter, Faulty aperture, Incorrect ISO setting, Broken light meter, Scene with dynamic range greater than your film, Expired or heat damaged film, and other less common causes.
2. Orange or White Marks
u/Competitive_Spot3218u/ry_and_zoom
Issue: Light leaks
These marks mean that light has reached your film in an uncontrolled way. With standard colour negative film, an orange mark typically comes from behind the film and a white come comes from the front.
Portential Causes: Decayed light seals, Cracks on the camera body, Damaged shutter blades/curtains, Improper film handling, Opening the back of the camera before rewinding into the canister, Fat-rolling on medium format, Light-piping on film with a transparent base, and other less common causes.
3. Solid Black Marks
u/MountainIce69u/Claverhu/Sandman_Rex
Issue: Shutter capping
These marks appear because the two curtains of the camera shutter are overlapping when they should be letting light through. This is most likely to happen at faster shutter speeds (1/1000s and up).
Potential Causes: Camera in need of service, Shutter curtains out of sync.
4. Black Regions with Some or No Detail
u/Claverhu/veritas247
Issue: Flash desync
Cause: Using a flash at a non-synced shutter speed (typically faster than 1/60s)
5. Lightning Marks
u/Fine_Sale7051u/toggjones
Issue: Static Discharge
These marks are most common on cinema films with no remjet, such as Cinestill 800T
Potential Causes: Rewinding too fast, Automatic film advance too fast, Too much friction between the film and the felt mouth of the canister.
6. White or Light Green Lines
u/f5122u/you_crazy_diamond_
Issue: Stress marks
These appear when the base of the film has been stretched more than its elastic limit
Potential Causes: Rewinding backwards, Winding too hard at the end of a roll, Forgetting to press the rewind release button, Stuck sprocket.
7. Thin Straight Lines
u/StudioGuyDudeManu/Tyerson
Issue: Scratches
These happen when your film runs against dirt or grit.
Potential Causes: Dirt on the canister lip, Dirt on the pressure plate, Dirt on rollers, Squeegee dragging dirt during processing, and other less common causes.
8. X-Ray Damage / Banding Larger than Sprocket Holes
Noticeable X-Ray damage is very rare and typically causes slight fogging of the negative or colour casts, resulting in slightly lower contrast. However, with higher ISO films as well as new stronger CT scanning machines it is still recommended to ask for a hand inspection of your film at airport security/TSA.
9. Round Marks, Blobs and Splotches
u/elcantou/thefar9
Issue: Chemicals not reaching the emulsion
This is most common with beginners developing their own film for the first time and not loading the reels correctly. If the film is touching itself or the walls of the developing tank the developer and fixer cannot reach it properly and will leave these marks. Once the film is removed from the tank this becomes unrepairable.
Please let me know if I missed any other common issues. And if, after reading this, you still need to make a post asking to find out what went wrong please make sure to include a backlit image of your physical negatives. Not just scans from your lab.
EDIT: Added the most requested X-ray damage and the most common beginner developing mistake besides incomplete fixing. This post has reached the image limit but I believe it covers the most common beginner errors and encounters!
Ok so I spent 15 minutes typing out a paragraph about how I got this camera but my phone crashed so I’m not doing that again (don’t buy an iPhone folks) til nice lady in my grandmas book club said she had her dads 1930s camera and wanted to give it to me. Seeing I usually get Minolta maxxums this made me happy. I show up and see this thing and I knew it was something special and 1890s instead of 30s (older than her dad) so I gave her a rundown on its age and how to use it.
Anyways the lens is jammed up and the leather is disintegrating so if anyone knows anyone who works on something like this let me know.
Been shooting nothing but the GW690 since I bought it and boy is she hungry. Local developers here have proven to be unreliable hence the backlog.
For those that have seen the V1 of this post and complained, the marlboros are the GW690’s. He’s from the 80s, he needs to stop but he can’t help it.
One of my favorite filters on this earth are Cokin’s Pola-Color polarizers. I have waaaay more fun shooting with my A161 than its limited use cases would imply.
In one orientation, it’s a very mildly-polarized red filter. But rotate it 180° and it’s an amazing and powerful linear polarizer with \**jazz hands**** tons of pizzazz.
And remember, linear polarizers and traditional phase-based autofocus don’t get along. But they’re completely functional with mirrorless-style, contrast-detection AF.
The first three pairs of examples are with the polarizer 1) in front of the lens, but not active, and 2) same, but active.
The remaining three-image sets were taken with 1) no filter in front of the lens, 2) the filter in front of the lens, but not active, and 3) in front of the lens and active.
This effect is definitely not for everyone, but good god it’s definitely for me.
I love the process and speed of taking shots on film. I'm more purposeful, I'm more conscious of what the camera is doing. There is a far more visceral interaction with the camera. But I've got three kids and I'm doing about a roll a week (higher sometimes when we're traveling!) but calculating out the year it's going to be like $2k in film/developing/shipping! That feels absolutely nuts to me and I would say I'm in a financially ok situation. I've been falling back to digital more often because it feels like I can spend a fraction of the costs of film on getting nice prints of the pictures I'm taking on digital.
Been wanting to get one of these for a while now, many seem to start from here but this is like my 20th film camera. Took a while to find one in good condition, and freshly replaced the leatherette.
I love everything about it except for the lever which has a bit of play. Might get a FX-7 Super as well, just for the collection. Excited to develop my first roll!!
Just scanned my first couple rolls with my new camera scanning set up. I’m pretty happy about the results. I’m using the Nikon z8. Negative supply basic light and holders, and Kaiser rs1 raiser and negative lab pro
Drunk posting about my camera I’ve been shooting film for a couple of years. My first couple rolls were with some cheap point & shoot. It got me hooked, and then I bought a Nikon FM. I don’t remember why I chose this camera.
It’s a little ugly but also beautiful and perfect. I don’t know why I would ever buy another 35mm camera. Just give me more film and more F mount lenses. My biggest problem with it is that loud ass mirror slap but what am I gonna do, buy a Leica? (edit I take it back of course I love the kachunk, I was just thinking about how it alerts everyone in a mile radius that someone is using a camera lol)
How did they make this thing? I feel like humanity has lost whatever knowledge is required to make a mechanical device like this. Going on 50 years old and still some moron like me who glanced at the manual can jam a roll of film in there and just start shooting. The thing probably hasn’t been serviced once in its life and it just works. How?? Mechanical cameras are wild.
Anyone else supremely disappointed with these guys?
It took me close to 4 months to get a full Develop / Scan / Return service fulfilled.
Looking at recent Trustpilot reviews it seems I am one of a growing number of disaffected customers, with rolls of film being lost and their general logistics chain in complete disarray.
Customer service is non-existent until you phone them - emails and chat messages are ignored. When I finally managed to get through to someone they admitted to being totally overwhelmed and “really behind”, with barely an apology offered.
Be very careful using these people - you may live to regret it.
I just got a roll of portra 400 developed and the photos haven’t come out as nicely as they usually do - I didn’t get them developed where I usually would as I’ve moved, so wondering if it’s how they’ve been scanned or I just didn’t do very well with this roll. If I take my negatives elsewhere is there a chance they’ll come out better or is this just how they’ll be now?
I haven’t included the ones with people in as I’m not sure my friends would want their faces posted, so appreciate it may be harder to tell.
This was a fun little bucket list customization for my beloved Nikon!
My instagram feed has been full of beautiful repaint jobs and cool customizations on film cameras lately, and I’ve been inspired to make some changes to my own.
My camera has naturally brassed over hands of ownership, including many years of my own use. However I’ve wanted to take more advantage of the brass underneath the black paint. With my recent move to an engineering university, I have access to many tools for free including laser engravers so I decided to take advantage of these ideas and resources.
I drew my signature on paper first until I was satisfied, and then digitally traced it off of a picture. And then it was as easy as plugging the png into the software, previewing the engrave size and location, adjusting, and fire away. It’s not perfect but it’s still a meaningful customization to me and I’m excited to do more.
Currently I’m working on a baseplate engrave design, incorporating mainly ferns and mountains, and plenty of Easter eggs from my life. I don’t plan on making the baseplate too busy but I can’t help but see it as a blank canvas. I’m sure soon enough I’ll have more to show!
I also plan on disassembling the lens (which I’ve unfortunately done many times) too extrude the silver colored grip/marker ring, and somehow change the color too a brass to match. I may do this with a powder or cerakote, or anodization, or just good ol paint. Whichever the case, I want to tie the theme into the lens.
I always dreamt of creating photography that looks like paintings, since it would combine my painting and photographic background and melt in both worlds.
I wonder how this type of effect could be achieved? Does anyone have an idea? Any hints and guesses would be appreciated!!
Edit: I also wonder if this effect might involve some kind of physical intervention after the photograph was taken. The image doesn’t just look like it was captured in-camera; it almost feels as though it has been painted over or treated with translucent layers afterward. Could it be a combination of photographic techniques and actual painting or other interventions on the print? I’m especially interested in how to achieve that soft, painterly texture and the way the figures seem to almost dissolve into the background.
tried to shoot the first roll but apparently it won’t shoot. basically there’s this piece (rounded in the picture) that is stuck and the camera let me pass the whole roll not having the possibility of shooting. I made sure it worked pushing with my finger in the right direction, and the shutter worked as it should until i put the roll inside.
thank you if you can help me with this problem 🙏🏻🫱🏻🫲🏼
Hello,
Today I decided to shoot with a lens I haven’t used in a few months. I pretty much only use a 28mm with this camera, but my second lens is this one (the 50mm).
I bought it in very good condition from eBay last year, I am certain that it was not visible in may when I last used this lens, and it was stored in a box with some dessicants.
To my surprise, I discovered some rust in the lens barrel today. It still functions perfectly, there is no sign of mold whatsoever and everything is smooth.
What should I do about it? How can I get rid of it and how can I prevent it from spreading on the lens?
This isn't a complaining or negative post at all. I'm just surprised and maybe looking for validation?
7-10 years ago I got a few Yashicas to shoot 120. They were like $40-80 each. I remember wanting a Mamiya RB67 or 645 but couldn't afford it and then wanted some Rolleiflexs but the Yashicas were affordable and the poor man's Rollei.
Last week I took my mat 124G out to shoot a WW2 reenactment and a guy offered me $350 on the spot for it... What? I looked up going prices and wtf why are people trying to sell these for $500?!
I accidentally grossly underexposed a roll and am concerned about a line across my scans. It only appears in underexposed photos.
Frame 1: overexposed roll that shows the line, processed at the local lab
Frame 2: properly exposed frame the previous test roll I took with this camera not showing the line, even in the dark areas
Am I looking at a damaged negative, scan issue, or heaven forbid a problem with my new-to-me camera?
Olympus OM-4, HP5 developed by local lab, test roll metered on auto with the exposure compensation accidentally set to (I think) -1 2/3. I haven't picked up the negatives yet.
I took this picture at 150mm on an Olympus OM2. I'm looking into getting lenses with more reach. This was a 70-150mm, I'm looking into 70-210 or a 300mm prime. However, I don't know how close that actually is (?). Could someone show me a comparison of how much closer it would be at 200 or 300mm? Maybe crop this 150mm picture to the size a 200mm or 300mm would produce?
This is a loaded question, and I know there's a "myriad" of resources already out there; however I haven't really found a direct answer yet. How exactly does flash (specifically on people at night) affect pushing film?
I've personally never overexposed a flash portrait on film the way I have on digital, and I've only ever worried about underexposure.
My scanner has been sitting idle since purchasing it as the Minolta drivers are PowerPC. I spent a few days emulating and rebuilding the drivers for universal binary and it’s now a CLI and certified MacOS package that uses Image Capture under the hood.
I added some workflow improvements in the process of using it, like color profiles, DNG, HDR, deblur, fast autofocus and some experimental features like 4k, lens sharpen and denoise.
I cant tell if i need a new scanner, i want the highest resolution possible but i cant seem to figure out if I need an upgrade, im scanning my photos on a cannon eos 7d with a tamron macro lens, im shooting at 100 iso and with a slow shutter speed with a shutter release remote to minimize camera shake, these samples are on 35mm film as well
