Leica IIif empty film

[Valentine]

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I shot 2 films in a row with my new Leica IIIF. The second film is completely fine, but the first one only has a small piece of the last shot. The rest of the film is empty. How can this be????

The camera works properly, the films are from the same roll, developed together, the shooting conditions are the same....

[Sandokan]

Is the first one fully overexposed or not exposed at all?

[250swb]

Did you leave the lens cap on?

[Pyrogallol]

If you have got a picture at the end of the film it must have been going through the camera to have got to the far end. Did the shutter and film wind on feel ok as you were taking the previous pictures? What shutter speeds did you use? Was the last shot that worked at a slower speed? If the ones that did not work were all at 200/500th maybe the shutter was  not opening at the highest speeds, known as “capping”.

Can we see a picture of the negatives?

[jerzy]

...or A/R lever was not fully in A position. This causes shutter to run fully closed. All other camera functions are as normal. You may wind, transport film, release but shutter will not open. The sound of shutter is a bit different, but for not so experienced ear not noticeably.

[Valentine]

13 hours ago, Sandokan said:

Is the first one fully overexposed or not exposed at all?

The first one only exposed the last quarter of the last frame. After much thought, I decided that the curtains were probably moving incorrectly at a speed of 500, and on the last frame I moved the speed to 200 and the curtains somehow moved into the correct position on their own.

[Valentine]

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12 hours ago, 250swb said:

Did you leave the lens cap on?

The first thing I thought about, but no.

[Valentine]

11 hours ago, Pyrogallol said:

If you have got a picture at the end of the film it must have been going through the camera to have got to the far end. Did the shutter and film wind on feel ok as you were taking the previous pictures? What shutter speeds did you use? Was the last shot that worked at a slower speed? If the ones that did not work were all at 200/500th maybe the shutter was  not opening at the highest speeds, known as “capping”.

Can we see a picture of the negatives?

Yes, now I think that the shutter did not open at speed 500 and was fine at 200.

[Valentine]

10 hours ago, jerzy said:

...or A/R lever was not fully in A position. This causes shutter to run fully closed. All other camera functions are as normal. You may wind, transport film, release but shutter will not open. The sound of shutter is a bit different, but for not so experienced ear not noticeably.

Yes, another opportunity. Perhaps the A/R lever moved slightly when I took the camera out of my pocket.

[Valentine]

Thanks for the useful tips! 😁 😁

[qqphot]

If the shutter tensions are quite wrong, it may be that the shutter edges never separate from one another over the entire transit across the film plane at higher speeds.

[dpitt]

It is worth putting a test film through at all speeds. Or just give it a CLA.

[Rollei35]

It sounds a lot like my iiic.

I had exactly same outcome when shooting iiic. The last few frames only has about 1/8 portion exposed. The frames prior to those are completely fine.

With much of a deliberation, I found out that those problematic frames were shot at 1/500, while other were at 1/200 or slower.

I didn't bother to get it CLA'ed, I just leave it at 1/200 or below.