andrew_clearfield

<p>I guess you missed it, since my post was so long: my other lenses focus perfectly at infinity. (One night, a couple of years back, I shot a very impressive full moon with the 250; it was sharp. I had already noticed that the 110 was a bit loose. Why didn't I do anything about it then? Well, we were in the midst of packing up to move, and I was trying to deal with having to disassemble and pack up my darkroom.) <br /> I tightened the rear cell to its mount to stop the lens barrel from wobbling, which did work. Backing off on the split ring loosens the lens again. There's no sign that anyone had monkeyed with the lens before; I don't recall it being at all loose when I bought it. It was used, but not very old in 1998, and in mint condition. <br /> Checking the alignment with a ground glass is a good idea, but if I'll have to shop the lens anyway, I'm not sure it's worth the trouble and expense to get a ground glass cut to fit the 6x7 back of the camera. The real test for plane of focus with a smaller negative—even 6x7 is small for visual inspection with a loupe—would be shooting test negatives. Alas, having them processed and professionally scanned by someone else—I don't trust my Epson flatbed enough for a fine test such as that—is also not exactly free, and I'd still have the problem with the infinity focus. Collimating would also be in order, especially if something might be wrong with the internal alignment of the elements, but I don't have access to a collimator. However, the way the lens is constructed, unlike the comparable RB lenses (127mm and 90mm), it is mounted inside the barrel as a unit, with the shutter integral with the lens.<br /> No, unless I can find out about a standard procedure that isn't obvious to me now for aligning this lens, I think I'm at the mercy of a repair service.</p>

<p>Jeez, Charles, I'm sorry I indirectly got you into this mess! As I said, the Apple people were able to help me clean it out of my Mac pretty quickly, but we did have to trash the history and erase a couple of applications which had glued themselves to my machine several times. I'm not sure you got the same one: did it fill your browser screen with a purple background and lists of code, with an 888 number to call for help, and two small windows on top of it that you couldn't quit out of? The assistance number got me to an Indian who wanted me to call another number where I'd have to pay $60 - $120 he said, unless I had a current warranty on my software, whatever the hell that is, and moreover, this could be a huge phishing operation. I hung up, and called Apple right away.<br> Windows is more vulnerable I think, just because the f---ing hackers spend more time and effort trying to attack it, since it's so much more popular. Or it may be that the architecture is more vulnerable, but then, there are also more defense products around. I hope you get rid of this filthy virus quickly! (I wonder why anyone would bother to attach malware to something that gets visited as rarely as a site claiming to have an online repair manual for a 20-year old upmarket analog camera?) </p>

<p>I had the same thing happen to me two days ago! Fortunately, the 'Help' desk at Apple was able to clean the thing out for me. But I haven't been able to find any RZ manuals posted online other than this one. <br> This was why I sent out an appeal for advice on photo.net, hoping that someone else had dealt with a similar program on these lenses (all the RZ lenses of this vintage—1980s and '90s) seem to be put together the same way. I may have no choice but to contact Mamiya—assuming they still fix these 'obsolete' analog devices!</p>

<p>Sorry; I thought it was clear from this being a "Mamiya RB/RZ" forum,, that my camera and lenses were Mamiya. I have an RZ 67 Professional—that's the second model. The 110 mm lens is Mamiya-Sekor, as are my other three.<br> I don't think a missing shim could be the problem, because the way the lens is mounted in its barrel, a shim would only move the lens <em>further</em> away from the film plane, making it focus still closer and moving infinity further out of reach.</p>

<p>BTW, that's Yosemite! (Assuming you didn't just make a slip of the keyboard.)</p>

<p>TX Pan Professional ISO 320 is a sheet film only (slightly different formulation from the roll film which used to be the most popular b&w film in the world). The difference in exposure index of less than 1/2 stop probably won't make that much difference; if you test your personal equipment and procedures, you might come up with an E.I. of anywhere from 200 to 600 or so; pushing beyond that will lose shadow detail unless your shutters are really off! <br> HC-110 (dil. B) gives brilliant results, but plain old D-76 has more compensating action, which might be useful in a film old enough that you don't know where the effective index has wandered to. The offsets are increasing fog—potassium bromide or benzotriazole can reduce that a bit, but at the expense or reducing film speed as well—which effectively makes the film "faster" but veils shadows, and gradual decay of the latent image, which would require longer development to get reasonable density in the highlights, but would make the fog worse. <br> If the images were likely to be really priceless, then it might be worthwhile to develop by inspection, but Tri-X was a bit too fast for that, even with treatment in pinacryptol green as a desensitizer first; in any case, development by inspection (very dim dark green safelight, for a few seconds only, when the film is roughly half developed) shouldn't be attempted until you've learned to judge what you're squinting at on various negatives where you don't care if they're ruined while you're learning. Enroll the help of an expert if you're going to try it. But after only 20 years, you'll probably get some salvageable pictures from conventional techniques, unless the film was stored in hot, damp conditions for much of the time. </p>

<p>For a while I'd noticed that I could wobble the barrel of my 110 f/2.8 up and down slightly when it was properly seated on the camera. This didn't happen on my other three lenses (50mm, 180mm, and 250mm) so the problem was obviously with the lens and not the camera, but I wasn't using it much, was in the process of moving and had to close down my darkroom, etc. I hadn't observed if it affected image quality (of course, I usually shoot stopped down somewhat which would minimize any negative effects, I think, as long as the lens hadn't moved much, and I frequently used the other lenses anyway) so I didn't worry about it until recently, when I got the camera out of storage to exercise the shutters, and it seemed the barrel was somewhat looser. It occurred to me that even a degree or two of deviation from a perfect right angle to the film plane would change the plane of focus, just as it would on a view camera.<br> I examined the lens more closely and realized that a split ring held the cell and shutter unit in place within the barrel—which has the mount, of course. When I tried to unscrew the ring, sure enough the lens unit itself was loosened in the barrel, and could be advanced or withdrawn slightly. Being careful not to scratch anything (!) I was able to tighten the ring and—voila!—the lens no longer wobbled in its barrel. But when I went outside to check the focusing, I realized that the lens was advanced very slightly, <strong>and could not be properly focused at infinity</strong>: with the bellows racked all the way in, it was still focusing about 20 meters away. It also seemed that the faint ring indicating slight wear from rotating the breech locking ring was visible, rather than underneath the ring, as it should be. Monkeying with the inner split ring and trying to press down on the mount as best I could while tightening it, I was still unable to get the 'infinity' position to focus further away than 30 or 40 meters at best. I checked with my longer-focus lenses and the camera itself is OK; these lenses at 'infinity' are sharpest when trained on trees 150 or 200 meters away. The problem is definitely in the 110 lens. Also: to the best I can tell, the barrel is about 2mm shorter on the bottom than the top, although without sharp reference marks, it's hard to judge exactly.<br> Does anyone have any experience with this issue? The present time is, let's say, not a good one to drop money on a serious repair service (I'm not even sure who to go to.) Usually, they charge a high flat fee before they'll even look at your camera. Is there some part of the adjustment procedure I don't know about? Obviously, if the distance were a hair <em>too short</em>, I could just rack out the lens ever so slightly and be at infinity then; otherwise, I'm focusing on the ground glass anyway, so if the distance scale is off by a tiny amount it's no big deal. The problem is that it is slightly too long. I'm not sure if the few repair manuals for sale on the web even go into adjusting lenses; the adjustment procedure for RB lenses is definitely different (and involves exposing the shutter assembly—no thank you: at that point, it would be an expert shop or no one. Any suggestions?</p>