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when your X-500 is frozen

Started Feb 9, 2021 | Discussions
MrPrime
MrPrime Regular Member • Posts: 441
when your X-500 is frozen

I took my (new to me) X-500 out for a stroll, to put a first roll of film through it. But it was pretty cold, somewhere around -5C. Everything was fine for the first 20 minutes but then the film wind-on started to feel sluggish and sound differently. One shot later the mirror flipped up to take the shot but never came back down, not until maybe 20s later. I wasted another couple of frames before it dawned on me that it was frozen. After about 15 minutes underneath my coat it had thawed out and started working again. The LED’s were functioning fine, meaning I don’t think the battery froze but some combination of battery and frozen lubricants were likely the culprit.

Just an FYI.

I was expecting the camera to be functional to at least the point where I could still work with bare hands but apparently not.

Anybody else froze a film camera recently ?

Edit: p.s. oops, I maybe in the wrong (digital) forum - but I’ve no means to move this post to the film forum.

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toni
toni Senior Member • Posts: 1,694
Re: when your X-500 is frozen

I never used a camera in those conditions, but if I did I would take a full manual camera as a backup.

The lock of the mirror could be due to low battery power, the XD has that behaviour.

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FrancoD Forum Pro • Posts: 19,261
Re: when your X-500 is frozen

The minimum temperature those battery work at depends on the minimum voltage your camera works at. Apparently your camera needs almost the full voltage (1.5v) to work so a bit of use and low temps work against you.

(some cameras will work down to 1v using those batteries, therefore will work at lower temps)

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