Percussive maintenance, or "If in doubt, give it a clout"
Actually, I didn't, but I did consider the option.
On Tuesday, we were on the way to the Distraction Club monthly show in the Phoenix on Cavendish Square. We had arrived at Oxford Circus tube, and were walking along the corridor toward the escalators when I suddenly felt the weight on my shoulder go, and heard a thunk on the ground behind me. I looked round to see my Nikon D5100 DSLR had slipped out of its case and fallen to the tiled floor.
Hoping it was all okay, I picked it up, put it back in the case and zipped the flap properly shut before we proceeded to the pub.
Once at the destination, I could check it over. And that's when I discovered that though all the electronics appeared to work and nothing appeared chipped or cracked, the shutter wouldn't work. And so, swearing silently, the only pictures I took were with my phone.
(The Nexus 6P does remarkably good work in a dimly-lit basement with moving targets, but it doesn't exactly have the same quality of picture)
Taking the lens off (a piece of equipment that had actually cost me more that the camera body when I originally bought it back in Kyoto in 2007), I looked inside the resulting aperture. The mirror wasn't moving properly when I pressed the shutter button. It quivered in place, but that was it.
Hello Google.
Well, it turns out that there are various possibilities, but one seemed to match what I could see. There's a plastic post that's supposed to stop the moving mirror from going too far when it springs forward and then back again, but the mirror had ridden up past it and was jammed on it. I stuck a jeweller's screwdriver in, wiggled a bit, and the mirror came loose. I pressed the shutter button, and everything was back to normal. Hooray and phew!
On Tuesday, we were on the way to the Distraction Club monthly show in the Phoenix on Cavendish Square. We had arrived at Oxford Circus tube, and were walking along the corridor toward the escalators when I suddenly felt the weight on my shoulder go, and heard a thunk on the ground behind me. I looked round to see my Nikon D5100 DSLR had slipped out of its case and fallen to the tiled floor.
Hoping it was all okay, I picked it up, put it back in the case and zipped the flap properly shut before we proceeded to the pub.
Once at the destination, I could check it over. And that's when I discovered that though all the electronics appeared to work and nothing appeared chipped or cracked, the shutter wouldn't work. And so, swearing silently, the only pictures I took were with my phone.
(The Nexus 6P does remarkably good work in a dimly-lit basement with moving targets, but it doesn't exactly have the same quality of picture)
Taking the lens off (a piece of equipment that had actually cost me more that the camera body when I originally bought it back in Kyoto in 2007), I looked inside the resulting aperture. The mirror wasn't moving properly when I pressed the shutter button. It quivered in place, but that was it.
Hello Google.
Well, it turns out that there are various possibilities, but one seemed to match what I could see. There's a plastic post that's supposed to stop the moving mirror from going too far when it springs forward and then back again, but the mirror had ridden up past it and was jammed on it. I stuck a jeweller's screwdriver in, wiggled a bit, and the mirror came loose. I pressed the shutter button, and everything was back to normal. Hooray and phew!