Couple of Mamiya C220f questions

For the last 20 years my favorite portrait out fit has been my Mamiya C330 with the 135mm lens. Just suits me fine in so many ways. My grand daughter has been getting seriously interested in film photography. Mostly she has been using a nice Yashica D TLR and the light meter app on her iPhone for an exposure meter. She has borrowed my C330 and agrees that the 135mm lens is great for portraits. Sooooo, after a bit of looking around I found a nice C220f with a very clean and accurate shutter 135. But it turns out there a couple of issues that I need to address before I turn it over to her. It has the type 2 WLF that lacks the sports finder. That is no problem, but it came with a +2 diopter magnifier which is very frustrating if you have "normal" vision. That is her, and at 79 I still have a great correction which lets me use the standard WLF magnifier. Am I right in thinking that the standard magnifier in this WLF was a -1.5? If so, I have found some and can replace the one in there. The standard diopter of this WLF seems to be a very obscure piece of information.

 

Second thing is the C220f seems to have been hardly used, and when you focus there is a tendency for the front to creep back. I think it is a combination of the bellows wanting to spring back to its folded state, and the focusing being quite free. I have been letting the camera sit with the bellows extended (propped open with a small block of wood) and maybe this will help, but would still like to tighten up the focusing a bit. My goal is to have the camera free of frustrations when I turn it over to her. Don't want to discourage her. Thanks in advance for any help

Ok, part of the problem solved. Turns out (from the copy of the owners handbook I found) that the standard lens in the flip-up magnifier is a -1.5 diopter. So that can be solved since there are a couple of sources for flip-up magnifier lenses. Still working on the loose focusing. Thanks

I recently started a new thread dedicated to just the focus rack kickback problem you mentioned here (or backlash, or whatever you want to call it). Several members posted theories that eventually led me in the right direction to solving this weird issue. The solution is fairly simple, but applies only to the later all-black C220F (like yours and mine) and perhaps their similar C330S big sister.

 

See details on how I fixed this focus retraction issue on my own C220F at this thread/post:

 

Mamiya C220F Focus Rack Backlash