I was standing right here, in one of my favourite places in South Australia. This is Razorback Lookup in Ikara–Flinders Ranges.
Standing right there when my OM-1 jammed. I’d fired off one shot and as I went to wind the camera on, I got partway through the wind then everything stopped. It felt stuck-stuck, too. Nothing flexible about it at all. I took the film out and put the camera away. I’d forgotten to charge my SLR, too, so all I had to document this place was my mobile. It did a passable job, I guess.
I’d had a jammy idler-gear with this OM-1 previously, but this felt different. And my patented percussive method of jiggling the idler-gear into the right spot wasn’t working. I took the film out of the camera, and set it aside in a bag. I actually thought it might have been the end of it for the camera. Curtains for the shutter curtains, you could say.
Feeling inspired today I began to pull the camera apart. I managed to get the camera un-jammed by jiggling the idler-gear. I was surprised.
The arrow shows the idler-gear, completely in the wrong position.
Here’s a video (with the lens off the camera…FOREBODING)showing the idler-gear in action.
I adjusted the little spring that keeps the idler-gear in the right spot, to make it a bit tighter. Tested the camera and it jammed again. I went through some basic trouble-shooting steps and it would sort itself out with the lens off. Fire perfectly with the lens off, and then not work again with the lens back on. The aperture lever felt fine – there was no way that it was causing enough resistance to jam the camera. Lens off: fine. Lens on: not fine.
Was it the lens? I put a different lens on and it worked perfectly. So it must be this 50mm f/1.8 lens causing problems somehow. The aperture levers felt the same on both lenses.
I played with the aperture ring. I played with the shutter speed ring. No better. Didn’t matter if it was set to 1/1000s or bulb. Then I changed the focus of the lens and when it wasn’t focused at infinity it was fine again. Tested it a few times. Back to infinity – no good. Away from infinity – good.
Turns out the rear element of the lens had come loose and was protruding a few millimetres further out than it should be and was getting hooked up on the mirror as it was trying to move out of the way. A quick tighten and we were back to normal.
The troublesome lens with the rear element no longer protruding out the back.
Chalk that up to another successful repair.