210mm lens problems, am I going nuts, or what?

dphphoto · Mar 15, 2006

Hi: I'd like some help and advice from my fellow LFers. My once trusty 210mm Calter HE (Fujinon) has decided to let me down.

I did a few building shots (old cabins in the Cades Cove area of Great Smoky Mountain Natl. Park, TN,) with this lens recently, and everything is slightly out of focus. I went back a week or so later, and shot a few more negs, and they too were out of focus. Don't know what happened. The negs I did with my other lenses were tack sharp as always, so I don't think it's the camera, my loup, or stupid me.

I took the front of the lens off the shutter and held it up to the light. I can see a couple of specs that look almost like scratches, but inside the lens elements, about 1/16" each (maybe paint that flaked off from inside the lens mount?).

So what do I do? Do I:

1.) Disassemble the elements with a lens wrench and clean them?
2.) Shelve the darn thing and replace it? And if so, with what? (I'm thinking of an Apo-Geronar, because of the cost, but also because they're small, and they're light, important considerations as I ungracefully age.)
3.) Throw up my hands in despair, sell all my equipment and take up needlepoint?

I'm really stuck here, as I did negs with this lens in December that look great.

One last question. Do the lenses sold without shutters on the Sinar boards fit into Copal shutters? The Copal 1 shutter on my 210mm looks new. (I think this is a dumb question, as I'm sure they do, but I'd like to know for certain before I buy one.)

Any comments and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Dean

argus · Mar 15, 2006

Are you sure it is the lens? Is there a possibility that the ground glass and film plane are out of registration.

G

rbarker · Mar 15, 2006

A couple of specs aren't going to make the whole negative slightly out of focus, but rather just a couple of soft spots. The fact that the images with the other lenses are sharp suggests your eyes haven't gone bad (leaving the needlepoint option in play, without fear of sewing yourself onto the fabric). I'd suggest checking the rear element is tight, too, although that should have shown on the GG.

It might be that you forgot to lock down the standards on the camera, and something shifted after you focused - perhaps when inserting the holder. I'd do a controlled test to see if that suggests anything that fits with the circumstances you were shooting in.

Donald Miller · Mar 15, 2006

To your knowledge, has your lens been remounted? I wonder that your lens is the cause of your problem. The specks that you mention are probably not even involved in the matter as being totally out of the plane of focus.

Do you recall the exposure details? If you stopped the lens down to F 32 or beyond and encountered defraction then the negatives would look soft. The degree of apparent unsharpness would become more pronounced with the degree of enlargement.

I don't see that you have a problem with the camera or your eyes as being causative factors either. What Ralph said about the the camera being locked down could be involved. The other thing would be camera shake. Was it windy? Was/is your tripod solid? How long were the exposures?

Are your other lenses shorter focal lengths?

dphphoto · Mar 15, 2006

Thanks for the comments. I didn't stop down below F32, I think I was between 22 and 32 but didn't record the exposures.
As I mentioned, my shots with the other lenses were ok (different subjects, though). The camera is still in good shape (Wista DX) and the tripod is an almost brand new carbon fibre from Amvona.com.
Still trying to puzzle this one out. Maybe some more shooting is required. Maybe even shooting the same subject with a different camera. I was thinking of shooting one of these buildings with my 8X10. Dean

dphphoto · Mar 15, 2006

I forgot to mention...one of my other lenses is a 400 tele-Fujinon. Negs with that are tack sharp. Dean

Monophoto · Mar 15, 2006

Dean -

Don't despair. One of the neat things about LF is that there are always new ways to make mistakes that we haven't encountered before. Unless your lens has been dropped, I suspect that the problem is one of those dumb "user errors".

When you look at the bum negatives, is there anything in focus - ie, that the plane of focus has shifted in front of or behind the subject? If there is, that would indicate that you have a focus shift problem and the idea about things not being locked down might be the problem.

On these recent outings were you using the same film holders you used in December? Arugs suggested the possibiliy of a registration problem, and if the bum negatives were made in different holders, registration could be the problem.

Finally, try making an enlargement from one of the negatives, and examine it closely to see if the problem is focus or movement. I would tend to be suspicious of camera movement caused by wind (it's March).

rbarker · Mar 15, 2006

Or, camera shake from a big truck rumbling by.

vet173 · Mar 16, 2006

I had a shot like that and figured out it was me. The ground was soft and me moving during the 50 second exposure was the culprit.

dphphoto · Mar 16, 2006

Looks like I'll have to shoot some tests this weekend. I'm thinking of shooting something in my back yard, maybe the back of my house, with all three of my lenses, but moving the camera so I get approximately the same framing with each shot. If the 210mm lens shots are still out of focus, and the others are sharp, I might consider getting something in one of those DB Sinar mounts, and screwing the cells into the Copal 1 shutter. Dean

David A. Goldfarb · Mar 16, 2006

Is 210mm your longest lens? If it is, and if you don't have problems with other lenses, I would suspect the tripod or head. It could be that the shutter is vibrating at a frequency that is resonant with the tripod, and this could cause problems with the front standard out farther. Try another tripod, if you can.

I bought one of those Amvona products once--a lateral arm with multiple camera mounts. It was okay and cheap, but I don't think I'd buy anything else from them. The build quality is kind of light.

Also, did you check focus at the shooting aperture? Focus shift isn't usually a big issue with modern lenses, but that could be another source of mysterious focus issues.

Ole · Mar 16, 2006

I have a tripod that is completely unusable with one particulr camera, yet quite good with any others. Could it be that the weight distribution of your camera with that particular lens (and extension) hits a "sweet spot" for resonance?

cdholden · Mar 16, 2006

I've got a Bogen 3046 with a ball level and fluid head that is very stable. I'm heading over in that direction this weekend... assuming Mother Nature plays along. If you're interested in a test with my tripod, drop me an email and we can arrange something.

MattKing · Mar 16, 2006

dphphoto said:
Looks like I'll have to shoot some tests this weekend. I'm thinking of shooting something in my back yard, maybe the back of my house, with all three of my lenses, but moving the camera so I get approximately the same framing with each shot. If the 210mm lens shots are still out of focus, and the others are sharp, I might consider getting something in one of those DB Sinar mounts, and screwing the cells into the Copal 1 shutter. Dean

A caveat here - almost all my LF knowledge has been obtained vicariously.

IMHO I wouldn't do this test by moving the camera, because that increases the variables. If possible, I would keep the camera stationary, and the bellows extension constant, and have someone move the subject until it is focussed for each lens (assuming there is a bellows extension point for which that is possible). That way, you can isolate whether the problem is in the camera/tripod combination, or whether it is in the camera/tripod/lens/shutter combination.

Good luck,

Matt

dphphoto · Mar 16, 2006

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions, and especially to cdholden for your kind offer.
Now, ta-da, I think I've solved the mystery. Here's what's going on. I went out in my backyard to do some "testing," put the 210mm on the camera, and couldn't focus on my back fence. (My 120mm focused in a snap.) I took the 210mm back off the camera and looked at it under the sunlight. Guess what? It was like looking at a snow globe, except that all the flakes were black. I've got some major paint disintegration inside the front cell. I doubt I could disassemble this and clean it, it looks too bad (even if I trusted myself to do it). I haven't seen anything like this before, short of an old Symmar that developed "schneideritis," but even that didn't look anything like this.
Looks like replacement is the best option. I'm thinking of a 210mm 5.6 something mounted in a Sinar DB board. I'm pretty sure you can simply unscrew the cells from the board and screw them into my still good Copal 1 shutter.
Again, thanks to everyone. This is a marvelous community. Dean
p.s. I kind of like this new tripod. It's replacing a nice old Burlebach that's just gotten too wobbly with age and use. Wood is nice, but I though I'd try something else for a change. DH

Ole · Mar 16, 2006

dphphoto said:
... I took the 210mm back off the camera and looked at it under the sunlight. Guess what? It was like looking at a snow globe, except that all the flakes were black. I've got some major paint disintegration inside the front cell. ...

As long as some light gets through, the lens should still be sharp. But a lot of loose black stuff might be an indication that the lens has suffered a knock, and displaced lens elements will cause focus problems.

cdholden · Mar 16, 2006

Being new to LF myself, you've got me wondering now. I've got a 300mm Symmar-S with schneideritis, but I don't see any paint flakes. Should I?

epatsellis · Mar 17, 2006

and more importantly (at least to me) what will you be doing with your old, worthless (hint, hint) 210 Caltar?

erie

dphphoto · Mar 17, 2006

Ole said:
As long as some light gets through, the lens should still be sharp. But a lot of loose black stuff might be an indication that the lens has suffered a knock, and displaced lens elements will cause focus problems.

What you're saying is absolutely 100 percent correct. Except that if you drop a lens that hard, you're probably going to get a dent in the rim somewhere, and mine still looks ok. (I used to do in-house studio work for a company in Virginia with a 270mm G-Claron that had a BIG dent in the front rim, and it still was sharp. The darn company was too cheap to replace it.)
Like I said, this thing suddenly looks like a snow globe. I can see where the paint is coming off inside the cell off the barrel.
Sure wish I knew how to clean it. Dean

Ole · Mar 17, 2006

dphphoto said:
... (I used to in-house studio work for a company in Virginia with a 270mm G-Claron that had a BIG dent in the front rim, and it still was sharp. The darn company was too cheap to replace it.)...

You haven't seen my 135mm f:3.5 Planar. Looks like it's been in a fight, and lost. The entire rim has so many dents I don't think it can ever be repaired short of replacing the whole thing - which is what the studio I got it from finally did. But it's still sharp, only just about worthless as a "collectors item". Suits me.

dphphoto · Mar 17, 2006

Ole said:
You haven't seen my 135mm f:3.5 Planar. Looks like it's been in a fight, and lost. The entire rim has so many dents I don't think it can ever be repaired short of replacing the whole thing - which is what the studio I got it from finally did. But it's still sharp, only just about worthless as a "collectors item". Suits me.

You know, you might be the right person to ask this. I think that the lenses mounted to the Sinar DB boards can be unscrewed and screwed back into a conventional Copal shutter, but I'm not 100 percent positive sure of it. If that's the case, though, I could pick up one of these for a lot less than a lens with a shutter. The shutter on my 210mm looks new and sounds right at the slow speeds (haven't tested it, though). Am I on the right track with this? Thanks, Dean

Ole · Mar 17, 2006

There shouldn't be any difference in the lens cells between DB and shutter mount. I check the total length of the lens before and after any kind of remounting. Mycaliper can measure differences as small as 1/20mm, that should be good enough for most lenses (maybe not for superwides).

I'm getting good at picking up trashed lenses in good shutters, and good lenses in trashed shutters! My last find was "2 G-Clarons for repair only" - $60. All they needed was a light cleaning, and both the 150 and the 270 were good as new

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