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Pro tip: I was cleaning shutter blades wrong for years

I was working on a Pentax K1000 last week, the kind with the vertical metal shutter. I always used a cotton swab with a bit of lighter fluid, wiping each blade individually. A guy at the camera swap meet in Portland saw my kit and said, 'You know, you're just pushing the gunk into the pivot points.' He was right. I switched to using a soft brush to lift the crumbly old grease off first, then a clean swab. The shutter speeds are way more consistent now. Has anyone else had a basic cleaning habit they had to unlearn?
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2 Comments
blake_smith
Brushing first makes total sense. I used to scrub old aperture blades with a q-tip and just smeared the grease around. A dry brush to get the big flakes off is a game changer for sure.
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maxmurphy
maxmurphy3d ago
Totally get that, I did the same thing with lens haze.
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