Old Minolta Htsi problem

[lviperz]

I recently went on vacation and decided to break out the old Minolta SLR. I wanted to see if what I've recently learned about manual mode could be carried over to film.

Well, here's my disapointment. I shot 5 rolls of 24exp. I'm lucky to have 40 pictures. All the rest have from 1/3 to 3/4 of the bottom all black. It's like the mirror is getting stuck. The upper portion of the picture is in perfect exposure so I'm assuming the mirror is getting stuck on the way up not allowing the full frame to get exposed.

I was just wondering if anybody ran in to a problem like this and if it was worth it to get the camera repaired. Or if there was anything I could do. My kid is going to take photography in school in 2 years and wanted to use this camera.

I appreciate any and all help and opinions. If anyone needs me to, I can scan a few shots and post them for examples of the problem.

Thanks all.

[blumesan]

All I can suggest is take off the lens and fire several shots, use slow shutter speed, and see if you can detect the mirror getting stuck at some point. There may be some gunk in the mirror chamber. If you can see where it is getting hung up, you may be able to fix it yourself. Otherwise I can't believe that is would be a very expensive repair for your local camera shop. Worth a try.

[lviperz]

After I posted my question I did just that. I set the shutter to 30 seconds and pressed the shutter release. The mirrir flipped up just fine. I looked around and didn't see much dirt or dust. So I set the shutter to 1/500 and fired off several shots. The mirror never missed a beat.

I've seen a few HTsi models on ebay. I mught just pick up one from there. I've also seen several other models. Does anyone know if my lenses will work with any other minolta maxxum as long as it takes the A type lenses?

[Latinbob]

Were these natural light or flash shots? Indoor or outdoor?

Bob

[lviperz]

Natural light. At the beach and theme parks in Florida. A mixture of S and A priority modes with a 70-300 lense.

[Latinbob]

Ok. It sounded like a sync problem, but if they are outside shots, probably not. It might be that the shutter is not opening all the way sometimes. If it has a bulb mode, open the back of the camera with it in bulb mode and trip the shutter. Is the shutter opening all the way? It may have gotten gunked up and need a cleaning and adjustment (CLA).

Bob

[lviperz]

Here are a couple of exa,ples of the shots I took. The first one is an example of a shot without the problem. The second shows the problem. And no, there wasn't anything in the way. But other shots have the black at the bottom covering up to almost 90% of the picture.

[Latinbob]

Looks like the top shutter curtain is sticking.

[lviperz]

I have come to the conclusion that the problem is with the shutter. I say this because the problem with the pictures is from the bottom up. Since the mirror moves from bottom to top, that would cause the black to be on the picture from the top down. Since the black is on the picture from the bottom up, and the shutter opens from the top down, this tells me the shutter is not always opening fully.

I have removed the lense and watched the shutter as I fired off many shots at different shutter speed from 30 sec to 1/1000. As far as I could see, it never missed a beat or got stuck. But I may not be able to actually see it get stuck at the fast speeds.

Does anyone know how to service the shutter? Is it something worth trying? Or should I just hang it up and get a new one? I would love to get a new digital slr but just can afford it right now.