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Found out the original Canon AE-1 shutter was tested with a cigarette
Honestly, I was deep in a repair forum rabbit hole yesterday and stumbled on this wild fact. A guy posted a scanned page from an old Canon service manual, and it straight up said to test the AE-1's vertical travel shutter timing using a burning cigarette. You'd hold it behind the curtain and watch the smoke trail in a strobe light to check for even travel. I found it on some niche photography history site while looking up a sticky curtain issue on a 1982 model I'm fixing. Tbh, it blew my mind that was ever a standard procedure. Can you imagine doing that in a shop today? Has anyone here actually seen that manual or used that method back in the day?
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alice_hart15d ago
Did they use menthols or regulars?
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Yeah, the "burning cigarette" method. A buddy of mine apprenticed in a camera shop in the late 90s and the old timer there showed him that trick on an old Nikon. He said the shop smelled awful and it was a total fire hazard, obviously. They stopped doing it pretty quick.
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hayden14410d ago
Oh wow, that's actually a super common mix-up. The cigarette test was for checking the film advance mechanism, not the shutter timing. You'd watch the smoke get pulled through the film gate to check for light seals.
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