I don't get why everyone loves compressed air for cleaning shutters

I know I'm gonna get heat for this but I just don't see it. Yesterday I was cleaning out a Pentax Spotmatic that had some sticky shutter blades. Everyone online says hit it with compressed air first, get all the dust out. So I did, and all it did was push the gunk deeper into the mechanism. I ended up having to pull the whole shutter stack apart anyway to get the old grease out with naptha. Now I've got a partial disassembly on my bench that took me 3 hours just to get the speeds right again. Compressed air is great if the camera is already clean, but for sticky shutters it's a waste of time. Has anyone else had better luck just going straight for the solvent clean instead?.

2 comments

2 Comments

fiona_fox562d ago

Wait, did you try canned air or an actual compressor? I used a little air blower on an old Zenit once and it just blew a cobweb deeper into the mirror box, ended up with a spiderweb on my focusing screen!

-1

andrew_wood721d ago

Funny enough, that reminds me of the time I tried blowing dust off a lens with my breath and just fogged the whole thing up. Ended up smearing it worse with my shirt sleeve.