For some reason I thought the OM pro-bodies were immune to this.
Seems not.
I've not used my 4Ti for a couple of years. Today I thought I'd give it a test-run by shooting a few frames of Velvia 100, in readiness for my twin boys' 10th birthday on Tuesday. Glad I tested it. I wasted about 7 or 8 shots at the start of the roll before I concluded it wasn't going to fix itself, three of them with brand new batteries.
Looks like it'll be taking a visit to Luton Cameras.
Shame...I took my boys' first photographs with this camera 12 hours after they were born and I wanted to use the same camera ten years later. Nevermind.
I've loaded the film into my trusty OM-1n instead, and wound past the first ten frames, just to be sure.
Just been messing with it without any film in. I think it's a power-supply problem.
When the mirror locks up, I can reset it by shifting the shutter-speed to mech. 1/60th. Switching to battery-test gives me the intermittent 'bleep', which is a warning that the batteries are going flat. But they're not. I gently shook the camera a little bit and bingo: one long 'bleep', and the shutter didn't lock up.
I've cleaned the spring at the bottom of the battery compartment, cleaned the threads, cleaned the cap, and still the same thing happens: sometimes Battery Check gives an intermitted 'bleep', give the camera a little shake, and you get the long 'bleep'.
God I HATE intermittent faults. They're a nightmare to explain to a repairer, and a nightmare for a repairer to reproduce and fix
Have tried three sets: the original set which I still think are OK, a brand new unused set and the set out of my OM-40, all of which are doing the same thing
Tbh I suspect it's nothing more serious than a dry-joint. Somewhere. I'd rather some pro's track it down and fix it than me. But it's going to have to go on the back burner because I don't have the spare money to repair it atm. So it's gone back in its camera-case in disgrace.
It might be worthy having a word with Alan at APM Camera Repairs in Newcastle, he is an Olympus trained technician, who is helpful and doesn't charge astronomical repair rates (Tuesday to Friday, closed Mondays).
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Re: OM-4Ti 'sticky magnet syndrome'
