Serious question, has anyone else had a shutter jam on a Nikon F2 in winter?

I was up in Vermont last January shooting some barns, temperature was around 15 degrees. My F2's shutter locked up completely after the third shot, curtains wouldn't move at all. I panicked for a minute, then remembered reading about cold grease stiffening up in older bodies. So I pulled the lens off, gently warmed the mirror box area with my hand for about five minutes, and it fired again. Worked fine the rest of the day as long as I kept the camera under my coat between shots. Has anyone else run into this with the F2 specifically, or is it just a Canon thing too?

2 comments

2 Comments

wren9763d ago

Oh, come on. I gotta disagree with the whole "cold grease" thing being the main culprit here. In my experience, it's way more about the battery being weak or the camera being improperly stored. Yeah, you warmed yours up and it worked, but that could've been the contacts making better connection from the heat, not the grease softening. F2 shutters are mechanical for the most part, so cold grease shouldn't be a total showstopper unless the camera was already on its last legs. I've shot my F2 at minus 10 degrees out west without a hiccup, never had to warm it up between shots. It's more about keeping the whole system dry and the batteries fresh, not babying the grease. Your mileage may vary, but I think people blame the cold too quick.

lilyo302d ago

Ngl, sounds like wren976 here thinks a frozen shutter is just a myth until they're stuck holding a brick of an F2 in a snowbank. Next time I'll just tape hand warmers to the mirror box and call it "battery optimization." Maybe we should start a support group for cameras that can't handle a little Vermont weather.