Need Film Help! Frames are 1/2 exposed; Literaly!

[Machate-man]

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.516464655054771.122508.100000737246669&type=1&l=5b80ecbae3

I was shooting a roll of Kodak 800 film in bright sunlight, and I ended up with frames that were blocked out for 1/2, sometimes 4/5 the frame!

I did shoot at f/22 @ 1/1000 as prescribed by the light meter, if that has something to do with it...I did end up with a few shots that were done at (I think) ~f/8 or 11. The coffee cup one was indoors, and was likely a wider (f/2.8 or 4) aperture.

This leads me to think that this is an aperture issue, but I'd like to hear from others before concluding that my camera is faulty.

 

[35mm]

I'd say that your camera uses horizontal-traveled shutter curtains, and that they're out of sync or something.

It's not related with the aperture, but with the shutter speed.

Take a look here: http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/fototech/focalplane/index.htm

 

[F1GTR]

Looks more like a shutter issue to me, it looks like the shutter is capping/tapering at higher speeds causing underexposure. If it were the aperture only the whole frame would be uniformly underexposed.

 

[Machate-man]

It appears that the shutter on the K1000 IS a Horizontal shutter, and that the speeds 1/1000 and 1/500 are out of sync.

Thanks for something? 👍

 

[wfooshee]

It looks like the leading curtain is slowing down, allowing the rear curtain to catch up with it, closing the gap between them.

It's important to understand that that the shutter speed is actually just the time between the front curtain starting and the rear curtain starting. The complete frame is not exposed at one time at high shutter speeds, but the frame is exposed by a moving gap across the frame, the gap being your shutter speed.

The actual travel speed of the curtains is whatever your flash sync speed is, because that's the fastest sutther speed that has the entire frame open so the flash can expose the full frame.

So your problem is that at the highest speeds, the front and rear curtains actually come together during the travel across the frame.

I had the opposite issue with a Canon AE-1 some years ago. The rear curtain would stick and then catch up to its place, resulting in a vertical bar of overexposure partway across the frame.

 

[Mikeybc]

It does seem like a shutter issue, If its fine at slower shutter speeds you could just use a slower film to get you by, but I wouldn't take the chance.