Alan, Mechanical shutters can be off by as much as twenty or twenty-five percent and still be considered "within spec". Usually the actual shutter speeds are closer to marked shutter speeds in the middle range, and off by the greater amounts at the highest and lowest shutter speeds. Long ago I learned to never rely on 1/1000 being too accurate, and, in fact, I try not to use that speed very much on any of the mechanical cameras that I own.
You are unrealistic to expect accuracy with such shutters, although consistency can be a reasonable expectation. Typically, middle range speeds seem to run anywhere from dead on for a particular speed to about 15% off. These differences are pretty much insignificant when working with slide film. There is some beautiful work done by a number of Leica users using slide film, and I'm sure that many people on this list can attest to the good results they get with their ancient Spotmatics, K-series, and MX cameras. Don't worry about it. Shoot some film and see how the exposures look. Alan Chan wrote: > > Just got my eBay mint MX this afternoon. After careful inspection, > everything works fine, except the 1s shutter speed is lesser than 1s (more > like 0.7s when compared to my Z-1p). Every other shutter "appears" fine. But > the interesting thing is, my other MX seems to have slightly faster 1s > shutter speed when compared to the Z-1p. > > My question is, am I realistic to expect that the whole range of shutter > speed of the MX (or any mechanical cameras) to be accurate (if not 100%)? If > not, wouldn't shooting slides be a problem? Also, my "new" MX sounds more > lighter and crisper when winding and firing the shutter. Does that mean it > was in newer condition mechanically (I removed the top and bottom to inspect > any sign of oxidation and everything looked fine)? Any help would be > appreciated. :) > > regards, > Alan Chan > > _________________________________________________________________ > Join the world�s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. > http://www.hotmail.com > - > This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, > go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to > visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org . -- Shel Belinkoff mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://home.earthlink.net/~belinkoff/ "When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem." --Edward Abbey - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
