Initially I tried to do this without removing the prism, but it was obvious that I would get muck over everything like that, so after a while I removed the prism and focus screen as well. I also cleaned out all the old crumbly light seal from the mirror box and focusing screen. With the mechanism working well, I then removed all the old light seal from the front of the chassis where the shutter fits, and replaced it with some fresh material. Although I didn’t strip everything down, I did use lots of cotton buds and IPA to remove all the old grease and then put a tiny smear of fresh grease on places where there was obviously metal moving against metal. Once I had the shutter working I gave some attention to the rest of the assembly and did some general cleaning up and lubrication. Generally, you shouldn’t need to retention the curtains, but that seemed to do the trick for me and the shutter timings still seem to be right. As a word of warning – this may not be the correct procedure to fix the camera although it seems to work fine with mine. In the case of my shutter I fixed it with a very simple procedure – I just added some turns to the first curtain tensioner so that there was enough energy to return it to the correct position during shutter release. Once I had the shutter out of the camera I found that with the film advance lever temporarily re-fitted I could cock the shutter and fire it to see what was wrong. Just as a word of caution, as the mechanism is lifted out the film advance gear will stay in the chassis but the cog fitted to the top of it might fall off, and also the shutter release button may fall out of its hole.Īt the time I took the shutter mechanism out I also discovered that the back door can be easily removed by lifting up the hinge pin and removing it – the door then just lifts away making work on the chassis much simpler. With these four screws out I found I could lift the mechanism up and out of the chassis and get to look at the shutter itself.

I found that inside the camera there are 4 screws in the top which hold the internal mechanism into the camera chassis. So, although I wanted to take the opportunity to clean all this mechanism up and re-grease it, I still needed to do some more dismantling. Once the top cover was off I could see that it wasn’t actually going to help me fix the shutter because the mechanism under the cover simple deals with the film advance and frame counter. Once all these parts are off the top of the camera lifts away. With that out the shaft comes out, along with a spring, washer, cylinder and felt washer and then it is obvious to see how the speed setting ring comes off (by removing a spring washer) and lifting it up. You need to turn the camera over and remove the spring loaded insert inside the shaft and there is a screw which needs to be undone. After a lot of messing about and unhelpful internet searches, I eventually found that there is a screw in the inside of the film rewind shaft.

On the rewind / film speed side however I couldn’t see an obvious way to remove the speed setting ring after I’d removed the film type reminder. The film advance side was simple – under the screwcap was the frame counter dial and when this was lifted of an obvious set of screws, lock washer, etc before the film advance was off.

The initial part is quite easy – there are a couple of screws in the back of the top cover and two large screwheads on the film advance and film rewind caps.

The first thing I did was to remove the top cover which actually turned out to be easy although I was stuck for quite a while at this stage.

Sony nex replacing shutter counter