crumbo

You are correct -- I misspoke (mistyped?). Battery fade is not a concern on the 2/2n, which do have circuitry to shut off power once it falls too low to function reliably, before meter drift would be a concern. That adjustment totally slipped my mind as it was _never_ a problem unless the main circuit had been tampered.

The Olympus 35 EC does not have a mechanism to prevent activation of the shutter release if there is no power -- that was the major improvement of the EC-2. On the original EC, the only way to know if the shutter is actually working is to be sure the yellow lamp on the top illuminates when the release button is pressed part way down. Otherwise you can blithely wind and snap through an entire roll, but the shutter may never open. If the yellow lamp never illuminates, it's likely power failure -- if not bad batteries, check the battery contacts inside the battery chamber, as well as the battery cover itself. Type 640 batteries were notorious for leaking and corroding the contacts and destroying the wires going to the camera circuit, and flooding the battery cover itself with corrosion. If you have a voltmeter, check resistance between the outer metal of the battery cover and the chrome battery contact itself. If there is continuity, you can carefully pry up the black plastic plate glued to the metal part of the battery cover, clean any corrosion and put some insulating tape where the battery contact plate is exposed on the underside of the plastic, and glue the plastic plate back in place. If you suspect corrosion has invaded the battery contacts themselves (almost guaranteed), you can carefully pry up the battery chamber (once the bottom cover has been removed) and access the wires leading to the circuit board. The wires (one red, one blue) should lead to a solder joint within an insulating sleeve -- from there I'll leave it up to you how to will "install" replacement contacts, since you're likely going to be using something other than original 640's.

Old thread, but never the less... On ALL XA's, be sure to turn the rewind knob clockwise ONLY to rewind the film, AFTER pressing the rewind release button on the bottom. Turning and forcing backwards will break the knob, shaft fork, and/or the collar of the plate through which the shaft is held.

The circuits of the OM-4/4T, 3/3T, and 2S all have a constant current drain, even when "off". Lithium and alkaline batteries cannot tolerate this, and will usually go dead in a matter of days, even if the camera sits unused. This is not so much a problem on properly functioning OM-2/2N cameras, though the accuracy of the meter needle in the finder will fade as alkaline and lithium batteries slowly die. Auto/Off exposures, and shutter speeds themselves should not suffer, though.

This is almost certainly a light leak. Inspect the negatives carefully. If any vestige of the light leak goes across the focal aperture (that's the "hard edge" of the frame), your light leak is almost certainly coming around the back cover. Any exceptions, while possible, would be extremely unusual. Check the foam around the inside of the back cover that surrounds the window that shows the film cassette. Half of the foam around that window should be covered by dull plastic (this was an improvement designed to keep the foam from sticking to the film cassette). If this foam is torn or has "migrated", that could be your problem. Also, check carefully for any cracks in the body covers. If the light leak is clearly "cut off" by the focal aperture (the edge of the frame), or if none of the above problems are evident, Olympus did report one problem that was corrected only by installing a tiny piece of anti-reflective tape to a place inside the camera from behind, accessible only while the lens is extended. I am loathe to try and describe that process unless absolutely necessary, but will do so if necessary. Just let me know.

Inside the bottom of the mirror box, below the black plate that covers the governor, is the stack of brass cams that control the shutter speeds. If that cam stack turns too far (past 1/1000th), one of the followers of the governor will drop into a low place on it's cam and that will keep the stack from turing back the other direction. Sometimes you can carefully continue rotating that stack until it returns to it's functional range. Sometimes, though, that follower on the governor will turn "backwards", so that it jams the cam stack. If this has occurred, it will need attention from an experienced technician -- I cannot imagine trying to describe the process of repositioning that follower without disassembly, though it is possible (assuming it is not actually damaged). If the cam stack will turn, you will need to rotate it until that small hole just behind the teeth on the lowest level is directly toward the front of the camera -- that is the 1/1000th second position. If you replace the black ring that controls the shutter speeds so that the tooth just in front of that hole is exactly between the first two teeth on the rear of that ring, it will be timed properly for 1/1000th second.