Got yelled at for using compressed air on a camera shutter... I think they were wrong

Last weekend I was cleaning dust off my old Pentax K1000 shutter curtain with a can of compressed air. A guy at the local camera club in Portland nearly lost his mind, said I was going to blast the shutter blades right out of alignment. Look, I used short bursts from like 8 inches away and held the mirror up with a lock. No damage at all, the thing fires fine. I get that you shouldn't blast the shutter directly on high end stuff but this is a beat up 1970s workhorse, not a Leica. Has anyone else used compressed air carefully on old cloth shutters and had it work out?

2 comments

2 Comments

piper17510d ago

Blast the shutter blades right out of alignment" is overblown. I've done it tons.

the_anna9d ago

Oh man, I gotta disagree with you there! I've seen a few cameras get their shutters totally messed up from compressed air blasting.