Blackness in K3 viewfinder

[Patrick Cooper]

Today, I took out my K3 (with no film in and it) and fooled around with it a bit. I looked through the viewfinder and noticed that a little over half the viewfinder was black! This was really bizarre. I wound up the camera to see if that would make any difference and I looked through the viewfinder again and it was normal again. Have other K3 owners experienced this at all? If so, do you know what causes this unusual phenomenon?

Edited November 8, 2006 by Patrick Cooper

[Kevin Zanit]

It?s just the shutter being half rotated out of the way. Winding the camera or rolling for a second should fix it. This is not a problem unique to the K3 (or even a problem), happens with most cameras now and then (that use a mirrored shutter viewing system).

 

Kevin Zanit

[Patrick Cooper]

Thanks - that makes perfect sense. However, could this be a problem when doing time lapse?

[Don Homewood]

No, it will not affect any time lapse. The way the K3 works is when the camera has a wind, whenever the shutter stops it stops over the film gate, meaning it won't block the viewfinder. So even if you're just clicking off one frame at a time, the shutter will always stop over the gate.

 

This is assuming there is still some wind left in the camera. When it winds out the shutter can stop anywhere.

 

The one problem with this otherwise great system is that the K3 has no inching knob, so you can't move the shutter out of the way to check the gate. <_<

[Alessandro Malfatti]

You can simply turn the winding key just until you hear a clicklike sound (not the usual when winding), in my camera after doing that the shutter moves to the standard position. Also, if you dont let the K3 run out the shutter should always stop in the closed position, but my experience is that one or two frames will be fogged anyway, although that shouldn't be a problem, whats a few fogged frames after all.

Edited November 10, 2006 by Alessandro Malfatti