Hello all,
I've just bought a used (mint) F4 and have made a disappointing
discovery:
When a manual focus lens is set to minimum aperture, I notice
that the F4 is having trouble letting the lens diaphragm stop all
the way down. When I fire a shot at say 1/2 sec. using a standard
50mm lens, the diaphragm stops to about f16 then continues to
slowly close before reaching f22. Sometimes it doesn't close all
the way down at all. It's almost as if the aperture blades were
sticky, or there wasn't enough tension to move them.
Before you all say "IT'S A FAULTY LENS YOU FOOL!" I've tried
EVERY one of my Nikkors with the F4. The problem persists. I
had a look at the F4's diaphragm release lever (on the left side of
the lens mount inside the body): It only travels half way down
when I fire the shutter, but when I press the aperture preview, it
moves all the way down as expected.
My old F3 has none of these problems. It's mechanism stops
down all the lenses perfectly and seems to have much more
tension.
Has anyone come across a similar problem?
Any comments much appreciated.
Bart.