I am suddenly getting negatives that are only 3/4 to 1/2 exposed across the frame with my M6. Exposed side is on the right side of frame. Some are not there at all and only one or two frames are complete on a 36 exposure roll (my last two rolls have been like this). Can anyone shed some light on what is happening?

-- matt veld (mahv@xtra.co.nz), March 15, 2001

Answers

Either you used flash with too high of a sync speed, or the shutter is hanging up somehow. Pop open the back and fire the shutter at different speeds while aiming at a bright area to see if the curtains are actually opening fully. Sounds to me like its time for some work on the camera.

-- Andrew Schank (aschank@flash.net), March 15, 2001.

Have a close look for film chips in the film gate that might be gumming up the works. You can usually pick them out with tweezers if you are careful.

Cheers,

-- John Collier (jbcollier@home.com), March 15, 2001.

Found the problem. It was indeed a chip in the film gate; dug it out and all is well, except I accidentally poured fresh full strength Xtol into one of my tanks instead of fix tonight :-). Must be getting old.

Thanks for the help.

-- matt veld (mahv@xtra.co.nz), March 18, 2001.

film chips?

-- grant (g4lamos@yahoo.com), March 18, 2001.

Yep, a film chip and quite a large one at that. I roll my own from a bulk loader and I noticed that the leader of one of my exposed films had a triangular piece missing from it. Right after that the problem with partly exposed frames began.

-- matt veld (mahv@xtra.co.nz), March 19, 2001.