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10-29-2019, 02:02 AM   #1
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Leaving a camera wound-on

Hi, sure this has been asked before, but search is broken for me right now.

Logic suggests (to me) that leaving a manual camera wound-on for a long time is bad, tensioning the spring etc.

How long is ok? An hour, day, week? there are times that I wind-on then decide not to shoot or miss the opportunity. Wondering if I should just waste that frame for the sake of mechanicals.

Cheers!

10-29-2019, 02:17 AM   #2
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In the old days, I was always told to not leave a camera wound. I've never had a winder spring fail though, so not sure if it was just an old wives tale.
Still, can't hurt to play it safe!
10-29-2019, 02:18 AM - 1 Like   #3
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In the old days, I was always told to not leave a camera wound. I've never had a winder spring fail though, so not sure if it was just an old wives tale.
Still, can't hurt to play it safe!
10-29-2019, 02:28 AM   #4
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I leave them wound on unless there's no lock on the shutter button (or off switch).

10-29-2019, 02:32 AM   #5
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I was always told not to. Not sure if there's a legitimate reason behind that though.
10-29-2019, 03:05 AM   #6
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QuoteOriginally posted by MarkJerling Quote
In the old days, I was always told to not leave a camera wound. I've never had a winder spring fail though, so not sure if it was just an old wives tale.
I also remember being told to store lenses stopped down to smallest aperture (f22/32) ?
10-29-2019, 03:44 AM   #7
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QuoteOriginally posted by pschlute Quote
I also remember being told to store lenses stopped down to smallest aperture (f22/32) ?
Yes, I remember that too!

10-29-2019, 05:12 AM   #8
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I never bothered with my Nikons. I kept them cocked and locked frequently. No harm was done, but it may just be luck.
10-29-2019, 06:18 AM   #9
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I've also never heard of a winder that failed because it was left under tension. I suspect that engineering learnt that lesson early on.
10-29-2019, 06:19 AM   #10
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Ok thank you all, I shall stop worrying about it (and think of something else to worry about!)
10-29-2019, 06:41 AM - 2 Likes   #11
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The old caution not to leave the shutter cocked is indeed because of the springs and in the case of cloth shutters the tapes stretching. If you have a cloth shutter where one of the curtains lags many times it's because the tapes have stretched.
10-29-2019, 07:24 AM   #12
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First, metal springs do not fail if left under tension unless the ambient temperature is about half the metal's melting temperature. (If metal springs could fail in this way, then the beams in steel buildings would fail from decades of load. And this also explains why modern steel buildings coat the beams in fire resistant foam -- if a fire heats the steel to half it melting temperature, it begins to slowly sag.)

Second, however I can imagine that some designs of older cloth shutter cameras might leave the cloth under tension and that the cloth might stretch. This effect would only happen to some designs.

EDIT: Not a Number beat me to it!
10-29-2019, 07:41 AM   #13
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QuoteOriginally posted by Beepaitch Quote
Ok thank you all, I shall stop worrying about it (and think of something else to worry about!)
Now that you've given me something new to worry about?
10-29-2019, 09:22 AM   #14
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I've only read that for the older Pentax 6x7 & 67 medium format bodies. Warning was that leaving the shutter cocked for a long period, may result in shutter times being off.

Phil.
10-29-2019, 09:45 AM   #15
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QuoteOriginally posted by pschlute Quote
I also remember being told to store lenses stopped down to smallest aperture (f22/32) ?
Puzzling over this one. On a K-mount lens, doing so will tension the stop-down mechanism and on an M42 lens if would have no effect.

Edit: I obviously did not ponder long enough. Take a K-mount lens off the camera and what does it do? It goes to least tension and stops down. I am will have to puzzle longer in regards to M42 lenses, though I think they work the opposite.


Steve

Last edited by stevebrot; 10-29-2019 at 03:18 PM.
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