I took photos with no problems the other day and the next time I picked my A7RV this afternoon, I heard a strange sound when the shutter released and a message popped up on my screen to shut the camera off. I took off the lens and found my shutter looked torn up. Has something like this ever happened to you?
Any idea what could have happened to ruin my shutter already? I carry the camera daily in a Billingham Hadley One bag and 've never dropped the camera or even banged it up. I bought this one from a local photographer less than a year ago but I'm sure with our combined ownership it's out of warranty. My shutter count is at 40,560 so nowhere near the actuations that it's rated for. My local camera store told me to expect a $1k+ repair.
Nidec Corp has been making all of Sony's shutter assemblies. The differences between generations is unknown, but models differ. From the outside they all look almost identical, starting with AFE-3313 in the original A7, they are now onto AFE-3379. Also, there's an old, no longer maintained database that shows variance in shutter life across older DSLR units: https://www.olegkikin.com/shutterlife/.
Also, if you're feeling ambitious, you can try this: Look in the side rails of the shutter mechanism and see if the curtain is off track. A stiff painting brush can be massaged over the curtain to see if it will slide back into the track. It appears to be the 'first curtain' of your shutter is faulty, which means if you could technically rip those shutter blades out and utilize the EFCS mode and have a semi-functioning shutter. I did this once on an A7R2 and the shutter worked, but there were certain shutter speeds that did not expose correctly because removing curtains causing changes in weight that causes changes in timing (been too long and can't remember exactly what speeds were an issue).
Thanks for the link! You're right that the #1 seems to describe what happened but it's still surprising to me that this would happen so early in the life of the camera. I've used only 8% of the actuations that the camera is supposedly rated for. It's been shipped off to a Sony authorized repair center at this point so we'll see how it goes.
A shutter rating - or ratings on most things really - is not a guarantee. At best it is an estimate of how many actuations they expect most shutters to have before failure, but there are going to be outliers. Some like yours will fail much earlier, others might last much longer than rated. You were likely just one of the unlucky early failures, nothing you or previous owner(s) did.
Looks like there are dents at the bottom of the lowest shutter blade. Did someone perhaps try to collapse a collapsible Leica lens in there or fit a lens made for a mirrorless (analog) camera with the shutter closer to the sensor/film?
Viramati wrote:
you can see the bottom shutter blade has come out of it's tracks and I wonder if there is a way of getting it back in.
I showed it to a technician and he immediately said that it needed to be sent in. In addition to being off track, it looks to me like part of the curtain also tore in the process. I think with more experience trying to fix cameras I might have tried it but one warning I read is that it's easy to damage the sensor when trying to fix this so I opted to send it off.
You made the right, and only smart decision by sending it in to the professionals. I see no mention of warrantee, so assuming that has past.
Bummer for sure but it will get fixed. If it helps, hey it's only 'camera dollars' 🤣
🤣