Leicina special "shutter test"

[bradley hayman]

I just received a Leicina special and it appears to function from what I can tell. The film in the cart moves, etc etc. however...

There's one test that's been recommended to super 8 camera buyers where you look straight into the camera and press the shutter release to see if the shutter movement is visible. This works on my rolei, my Nikon, but with my new Leicina special, I don't see that flicker when I do this test. I tried opening it up (to try the same test but from the opposite point of view) but I can't seem to get the motor running with it open.

 

Is this normal? Or just a bad sign?

[Andries Molenaar]

When the door is open there is no contact to the batteries...

 

You would have to run it from a external powersupply. Or put a lightsource in the filmchamber, run the camera and check the light flickering from the front, through the lens or take that off and just look at the bare shutter .

[bradley hayman]

Thanks for that Andries. You're right about the battery contacts. I should've realized that.

 

When I remove the lens and look at the bare shutter while pressing the release, I can see something moving now, but only when I'm looking from a very specific angle. If I look straight through the front of the lens-less camera from a different angle I can see light coming through the viewfinder in back... and when I do that, no shutter movement can be seen. I'm hoping this discrepancy is the result of the beam splitter that I believe the Leicina has in its viewing system?

 

Please forgive my naïveté but I'm nervous because this untested camera was forced into shooting 4 rolls during a recent location shoot (the reason for the delay in my reply) when my primary camera fell victim to condensation. I'm (obviously) still learning about this function on cameras but otherwise the camera seems fine from what I can see. I won it on eBay (body only) at what I thought was a very low price and my inner pessimist thinks something has to be wrong lol