Graflex.org

[t.r.sanford]

I'd be interested to know why the FP curtain is skewed in the manner you describe. I've seen a variety of curtain problems, but never that one!

[djv]

I'm not sure why it's skewed like that either, it seems to be wound on the rollers straight, I took the back off to check. I'll post a pic or two in a moment.

I took some time last night to clean up the camera, wipe it down with pledge and use a black crayon to blacken a couple rough spots on the case. It looks 110% better. I also cleared up the dragging lens shutter by dipping a q-tip in lighter fluid then using that to apply it lightly to the escapement gears. It's actually too fast now, snapping just slightly faster than 1 second at the 1" exposure mark.

I'm hunting down a type "23" back for it now, and starting research on building a makeshift darkroom. Does anyone here know of a good place for supplies and parts aside from ebay?

[EDIT] - Here's a picture, it actually looks like the rollers themselves might be shifted over a bit, since the shutter curtain is so far over to the left its covering the raised edge of the little steel guide rollers both above and below the bellows opening. You can also see the wood in the left side of the slit. This is at apeture "D"



[ This Message was edited by: djv on 2004-03-23 08:58 ]

[troublemaker]

I have a nice Speed 23, and have noticed that my curtain is skewed a bit like the one pictured here, but it works fine. While I am fairly mechanically inclined, I have been considering making contact with Mr. Lustig and dropping the camera off with him this summer while in the Sierra if he is able to clean and check the FP shutter and atend to a minor problem with the back rails.
As far as the Ronsonal patch on leaf shutters, I found that it did not work for me and actually created other problems. I was glad I tried it with a junker lens first! I will be sending my better sutter/lens pieces for pro-CLA's as economies and time allow.
Good luck on the roll-back hunt. I have picked a few and only a couple actually work properly, basically 1 in 2. My favorite is the RH-10 lever wind so far. I have been disgusted with the Mamiya backs being pawned off on e-pray as being in working cond. I highly suggest making sure where ever you get one that they will allow you to test it in daylight with film. I have bought good backs from 50.00 to 100.00 bucks, and the price seems to have littel to do with whether or not they work. I have since founf a reputable camera shop in Long beach that carries a lot of backs, but one will pay dearly for thiers, but also know they will at least work (reconditioned RB67's sell there for 175-225.00) Others have thier own preferences, but I have not found a better back than my RH-10 for speed and reliability. I use the Graflex 23 for full frame landscape work, and film flatness has not been a problem as then I am ussually stopping down to f22 or 32. The weight of the roll backs is also an issue for me for backpacking. The Mamiya is heavy. THe RH-10 in the middle with its bigger rollers, and the 23 is noticeably lighter and I will pack one or two of these this summer, but they tend to overlap one or two frames at the end of the roll; it has not really been a major issue so far, nothing I can't live with since I am aware of it. I am going to try and fix one of the RB67 backs myself when time allows, but do not trust them anymore, whereas I have never had light contaminated film with the old graflex backs, except when I popped a back off with the dark slide in my pocket, oopps. I have seen Graflex-23 backs in the Mid-West photo mailer. You might try checking thier web site, but they don't seem to answer e-mail, call them. I think you can link to thier site from the sellers listed on this site. Mind that these are my expereinces and opinions and subject to limited experience.
Good luck finishing up your project.
Steve

[ This Message was edited by: troublemaker on 2004-03-23 09:47 ]

[glennfromwy]

The skewed curtain should not be a problem as long as it still covers and doesn't let light leak past the side. I have seen the problem often but it doesn't seem to have much effect, in my experience. Be sure to test the shutter curtain for pinhole light leaks.

_________________
Glenn

"Wyoming - Where everybody is somebody else's weirdo"

[djv]

OK, it sounds like hte FP shutter skew isn't going to be that big of an issue. What will be is getting a film back for the camera. I've located some RH-10's for a little over $60 at adorama.com, but wanted to see if anyone here has had the chance to do business with these folks. Their reviews on epinions.com were somewhat mixed. Thanks again for all the valuable info!


[edit] - Tried to do a fancy signature, but phpbb chewed it up.

[ This Message was edited by: djv on 2004-03-23 13:03 ]

[Micah in NC]

djv wrote: "Does anyone here know of a good place for supplies and parts aside from ebay?"

Well, I've had good luck buying film, paper, chemistry for B&W work, and developing trays, etc. from B&H Photo up in New York. They have a website: http://www.bhphotovideo.com and are very reasonable on prices, I think. Just go to that web address and click on the "Darkroom" button on the menu on the left side of their home page. Tons of stuff!

--Micah in NC

[45PSS]

On the skew: I've only worked on the pacemakers shutter, couldn't get the '09 RB Auto fully apart due to a stuck screw that I did not want to chance breaking and its shutter is closer to the one you have. I can see the curtain is winding to the left on the top roller, look at the right top and you can see that it is tapered not square. The correction on the pacemaker is to put a shim on the roller shaft between the roller and the case bushing. If the curtain slot is fully covering the film and the curtain is not being frayed by rubbing on the case then it is not broken. Only fix if broken.


A few years back I purchased several items from Adorama spread over a year and a half by phone from magizine ads. They are as reliable as B&H or better.
Charles

_________________
The best camera ever made is the one that YOU enjoy using and produces the image quality that satifies YOU.

[t.r.sanford]

Adorama is a very durable retailer here, and has gotten better as its ancient competitors have folded, one by one. You can always experience a problem with mail order, even when buying from B&H (or, for that matter, Sears, Roebuck). I'd order by mail from Adorama without hesitation, if I couldn't get down to their store.

[djv]

The peices are all falling into place! The same friend who gave me the Mini SG brought in a couple of lensboards with shutters and lenses on them for me to rework for him, along with a old Weston Master III lightmeter to do a bit of research on. While working on these, one of my supervisors walked by and started asking questions (he used to be a Navy photographer) and mentioned that he had some old Mamiya equipment he was thinking of getting rid of, most notably some RB-67 roll film backs! I'll do what I can to get all of it pulled together in the next week or so, and hopefully the next post you see from me will include scans from my first pictures with the camera!

[disemjg]

Expect the seals and pads in the Mamiya backs to be shot; look for sticky residue on the knife edges and crumbs of black goo. You can replace these yourself if you are handy and patient; otherwise factor in the repair cost. You can buy the foam from Micro Tools.

The Graflex roll backs do not have this problem as their seals are yarn, with does not deteriorate with age.

[djv]

Actually, he still shoots with these so I expect them to be in excellent working condition. He's not sure he's ready to part with them yet, but he's going to let me borrow a back in order to test the camera out.

[RichS]

I see this topic going in many directions, just in time for my memory to ping...

I have a Speed here that had a skewed curtain when I got it. I forgot all about it until I saw your picture. Looked & worked exactly the same...

The problem with this camera was a very small tear in the curtain material right where one of the opening ended in a corner, where's there's very little material to begin with. This allowed that side of the curtain to strech just a bit and cause the skew to start.

I patched this spot with a small piece of bellows/shutter curtail patch material & latex glue and it seemed to fix it just fine. Although I don't use the FP shutters, so who knows?

Just throwin' out my two fifths of a nickle...


_________________
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"Ya just can't have too many GVIIs"
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[djv]

As promised (though a bit late) here is one of the first pics from this camera!

A few things I learned while working with this camera:

* Photography before autofocus, TTL metering and programed automatic exposure was a lot of work.

* I'm apparently very spoiled by autofocus, TTL metering and programed automatic exposure.

* Good light meters are hard to find at a reasonable price nowadays. (reasonable for me meaning < $100)

* In a pinch a borrowed $4500 Digital SLR makes a decent spot meter. You have to give it back though, people don't like it when you walk off with one of those.

* Kodak Portra 160NC is apparently still capable of taking a halfway decent picture, even a full year out of date.

* You can get horribly out of date film for free from friends who do a lot of photography.

* There is apparently some unwritten law of physics that dictates that the ISO of your film is inversely proportional to the likelyhood of someone making some unexpected rapid movement at the momemt the shutter is released. This factor is doubled when you're not using a flash. It is doubled again if the shot is a "candid" shot.


Anyway, enough yammering. Here's what I consider the only picture off the roll worth my time to scan and upload. It's a shot of a co-worker who is taking a shot of me with the aformentioned SLR. Overall, the film did fairly well considering how far it was out of date. There is no evidence of light leaks, streaking or other problems with the camera, and the light seals I restored on the Mamaiya roll film back worked great (yeah, you guys were right again, those backs suck badly for seal rot)



This is a close-up crop of his face. This picture was scanned at 600 DPI, and as you can see there's a lot of very sharp detail in this 4x5 proof, especialy in the area of the hair and the... "hardware" he has on his ear. The 101mm Ektar lens is NICE. Another thing I noticed is that there is no evidence of chromatic abberation in high contrast areas near the corners, which was really suprising. I suppose if you blew the print up to 8x10, you might be able to make out some slight purple or blue fringe, but this shot looks real clean to me.



Encouraged by these results, I've run two rolls of Illford 400 C-41 process black and white through the camera, one of them at my son's soccer practice, after picking up an old but still good kalimar meter for $15 at a local camera shop. I got a lot of strange looks, and I can't wait for the pictures to come back in a couple days.

[Dan Fromm]

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Geezzz, what happened to that kid's ears?
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