Thread: HG1 Shutter stuck or frozen

Hi everyone,

I have a GH1, and the shutter froze in the closed position. (Remove the lens and you see the shutter, not the sensor). The weather was somewhat below freezing and as soon as I got back to the car, (from cross country skiing), I was able to free up the shutter by making a setting using manual mode.

Has any one else had experience with shutter freezing in cold weather?

If so, has anyone used another technique to free up the shutter? (It was tempting to try to gently tap the shutter down on the slightly exposed bar or tab seen on the cameras left (or seen on the right side) of the shutter.

What do you think caused the freeze? It was windy and perhaps a snowflake may have made it into the camera during a lens change.

It seems to be working fine now.

Thanks

Could the cold weather have rendered the battery too weak to complete the shutter action?

Hi halmanas
Thanks for the suggestion. It certainly would have some kind of effect, but I do not think it is the only cause.

I tried another battery that I had in my pocket, but the shutter was still stuck. The somewhat warmer battery indicated a full charge.

I have used the camera a few times in the cold and all that has happened before is that the battery life is dramatically reduced, and I would get the low battery-warning signal before the camera shut down.

As an aside, I would say the battery lasted 1/2 to 1/3 as long as usual in somewhat below freezing temperatures. I have found that in the winter I need to carry at least 3 batteries for 4 or 5 hours of use, ie camera on 1/4 the time with maybe 5 to 10 min of video and 100 pictures. I would rotate the batteries from camera to my pocket for warming.

snowflake

Just an update.

I do not know if this is a coincidence, but it turns out that the mounting ring on the camera was loose.

Occasionally I would get an error message that the camera lens was not mounted properly. I ignored this message in the past since sometimes I failed to fully mount the lens and when I reset it, the lens worked fine. Most probably this was the beginning of the mounting ring loosening. When the lens actually began to noticeably move slightly on the camera body is when I noticed what was wrong.

While the cold could be the issue, I think it may be the erratic electrical contacts messing things up.

I will let you know if the shutter sticks again, assuming it gets cold enough again, but for now I think the problem is solved.

I also used a vacuum cleaner to suck out some small dust particles inside. I also ran the shutter at rapid fire (seven times) a few times with the vacuum on, just incase there was some dust in the shutter that needed to be removed.