Shutter failure and camera position

[eudemian]

How do I know I have had shutter failure, well the camera told me in no uncertain terms.? That much is fact.

What I find interesting and would like speculation\explanation about is the nature of this shutter failure. The camera would not fire the shutter when held horizontally, yet when I moved the camera, tilting it up or down it would fire. I now have a fine collection of well exposed ceiling and floors. Perhaps this is the direction that my talents should take and the camera has decided, being the superior in this relationship, that I should go in that direction.

I can only speculate, is there some trigger (mercury sensor or something) that will only allow the camera to operate in a certain position? I am sure there are other, better thoughts out there on this and I would welcome them.

Please try to refrain from imputing idiocy as a possible explanation , the thread originator has suffered enough with the above behavior.

Guernsey Tom

[jaapv]

The most likely explanation, I think, is that something in the shutterlock has worked loose, blocking the shutter when the camera is vertical.

[SJP]

Or the orientation sensor is doing something weird (needed for autorotate of the files on import to PC/Mac).

[jaapv]

I don't think so, that reacts to portrait-landscape.

[marknorton]

I agree with Jaap - there's a spring which is meant to release the shutter lock when the electromagnet is pulsed; I can't remember the orientation of it in the camera off-hand, but maybe that spring is broken or has become unhooked and the lock lever is jamming the shutter preventing it being released. Tilt the camera to get some help from gravity and it works.

When you try to release the shutter and it fails, do you hear anything at all?

[eudemian]

Not a dickie bird Mark. What does that signify? I tried to fool the camera sometimes by beginning to tilt it but it always fired before I could get it back to the horizontal position. Of course this is all immaterial now because the shutter will not work at all in any position.

Do you think there are various types of shutter failure, some attributable to the type of shutter used, to failing parts? It always amused me about Henry Ford that he deliberately under engineered some parts of the early Ford because he discovered that these outlasted everything else and what was the point of that. I do not mean that Leica are engaged in that exercise but the strength of a whole system is actually determined by the strength of the weakest part within it, if you get my meaning. It is late and I have not slept well for days.

This is very interesting thinking, I knew there would be some mechanical glitch/fault to explain this odd behaviour.

Guernsey Tom

[jimmy pro]

A large % of the shutter failures spoke about bent or missalined shutter blades. This one sounds like a switch. The M8 sounds like it's a lot more complicated to put together than a M7 or MP, and plenty of folks had QC problems with those, so it doesn't surprize me at all that M8's fail from a bunch of different causes. This one sounds more like an assembly screwup (maybe switch not attached well enough), while the one's with bent blades sounds more like a bad batch of shutters. All speculation, bottom-line is it's all fixable even if it's a pissoff to give up a $5.5K camera for a couple months at a crack.

[fotografr]

Well, at least you have retained your sense of humour. That's more than a lot of people in your situation would do. Good luck.