Not so long ago, a good old childhood friend, gifted me his fathers Leicaflex SL, with which i have shot quite a few rolls, it has always been plagued by intermittent light leaks, not consistent. So i have many great photos with out any light leakage. You can see the error in the picture, its pretty consistent, but varies a lot in how much it affects the picture.
I posted the above pictures in several different Facebook groups, and got some good advice on howto approach it with logic. As you can see on the negative below, the light leakage stops at the sprockets, and that actually tells us that the light leak comes from the front the film/camera. If it had come from the back, the sprocket would also have been colored.
Next step was finding out why it only happened sometimes…. Another Facebook group, and another answer from an old camera dealer, who suggested i looked at the “second” curtain, meaning that one thats there when you cock the shutter on the camera, and voila we have our culprit 🙂 So if i have the shutter cocked long before the taking the shot, it slowly builds up. Elementary my dear Watson ! But did not find so much info about it, so thought i would write this blogpost, hope you found it useful.
Next step is figuring out how to fix it, have some ideas, that will come in another blogpost! 🙂 Stay safe out there.