So the inevitable happened with my old camera. The film advance lever has started slipping.
If you’ve never experienced this failure, here’s how it feels: you stroke the advance lever and about halfway through the throw, it slips. There’s a brief grinding sensation, the resistance drops, and the lever completes its arc without actually advancing the film a full frame. The mechanism has skipped over a tooth on the gear it’s supposed to be driving.
In my case, it’s consistent — roughly halfway through the advance stroke, every time. That kind of repeatability tells you something. It’s not random slippage from a worn or contaminated surface. There’s likely a specific tooth (or a specific part of the advance mechanism) that’s the culprit: a chipped gear tooth, a worn pawl, a spring that’s lost tension, or dried lubricant that’s causing a momentary bind right at the same point in the cycle.
Why This Matters More Than It Might Seem
With a smaller format camera, a missed advance might mean a double exposure or a wasted frame. On the Pentax 6×7, shooting 120 film, you’re already working with a limited frame count — 10 shots per roll. A malfunctioning advance means you can’t trust your frame spacing, and in a worst case, you’re tearing or creasing film as the transport fights itself.
For anyone shooting this camera seriously — whether for portraits, landscapes, or any work where you’re not bracketing your way through a motor-driven 36-exposure roll — a reliable advance isn’t optional.
The Repair Decision
The Pentax 6×7 is a fully mechanical, fully repairable camera. That’s one of the things that makes it worth owning in the first place. But it’s also a complex machine with tight tolerances, and the film transport mechanism in particular requires someone who actually knows what they’re doing. Example of complexity below:
I’m sending mine to Nippon Photo Clinic in New York City, located at 37 W 39th Street, Suite 401. They specialize in film camera repair and have a well-earned reputation among medium format shooters. This is not a situation for a DIY teardown tutorial — or at least not for me, not on a body I depend on.
What to Watch For on Your Own 6×7
If you own a Pentax 6×7 or 67/67II, a few things worth monitoring:
The advance stroke should feel consistent throughout. Any variation in resistance — especially a repeating catch or slip at the same point — is a warning sign.
Listen for grinding. The advance should be firm but smooth. A grinding or clicking that wasn’t there before usually means metal-on-metal contact that shouldn’t be happening.
Check your frame spacing on processed film. If frames are inconsistently spaced or overlapping, the advance isn’t completing its full cycle even if it feels like it is.
Don’t force it. If the lever is fighting you, stop. Continuing to force a mechanism that’s jumping teeth can turn a gear repair into a more significant rebuild.
Sourcing Repair
Finding competent medium format repair technicians is increasingly difficult. The pool of people who trained on these cameras is aging, and many have retired. If you’re in the U.S., a short list of reputable shops that handle Pentax medium format includes Nippon Photo Clinic, as well as a handful of regional technicians whose reputations circulate in film photography communities online.
If you’re outside major metro areas, shipping to a specialist is usually the right call. The cost of shipping is trivial compared to the cost of a botched repair.
The Broader Point
Cameras like the Pentax 6×7 were built to last. The engineering is robust, the tolerances are tight, and the materials are serviceable. What they weren’t built to handle is decades of deferred maintenance, dried lubrication, and the kind of benign neglect that most film cameras have experienced since the digital transition. Regular CLA (clean, lubricate, adjust) service is the difference between a camera that performs and one that fails mid-shoot.
I’ll post a follow-up once the body is back from Nippon Photo Clinic with what they found and what the repair involved.
Have you dealt with a film advance issue on your Pentax 6×7 or 67? Drop a note in the comments — I’m curious how common this failure mode is and what repair experiences others have had.
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