My beloved Bolex non-Reflex camera came to me in 1990 with a broken eye-level focus eyepiece (yellow circle). Apparently the camera was dropped at one time and landed on the eyepiece. That drop tore out the screws and when it fell apart, the lenses in the eyepiece fell out so it could no longer focus. I cobbled together some parts and got it to kind of focus but it is not a clear image.
For many years I have been looking for the eyepiece, or the whole assembly. I even considered buying a whole non-working camera just for the eyepiece, but prices on these cameras have gone up recently.
For those of you not familiar, on the top of the camera is a window that shows the view of the lens in the upper-most pisition. This is NOT the taking lens position. But it allows you to focus that lens, then swing the lens to the taking position for filming. That is how one focuses these cameras.
In practice, especially with neutral density filters (like in the image below), I focus with the 35mm long lens. Then transfer the distance to the scale on the taking lens. The 35mm always has a finer focus scale than the shorter lenses. For example the 35mm lens might focus on the subject indicating 30 feet. That is then easily transferred to the 5.5mm lens which has marks at 15 feet and infinity 1mm apart and a depth of field scale showing 3 feet to infinity in focus at f 1.8 !
What the Eye-Level Focus Finder does is allow one to view the little ground glass focusing image from the back of the camera, rather than the top. At first, it was an accessory for $37.75 in 1952 ($437 today!!) , but eventually all the non-Reflex cameras came with it standard.
For many years I have been looking for the eyepiece, or the whole assembly. I even considered buying a whole non-working camera just for the eyepiece, but prices on these cameras have gone up recently.
For those of you not familiar, on the top of the camera is a window that shows the view of the lens in the upper-most pisition. This is NOT the taking lens position. But it allows you to focus that lens, then swing the lens to the taking position for filming. That is how one focuses these cameras.
In practice, especially with neutral density filters (like in the image below), I focus with the 35mm long lens. Then transfer the distance to the scale on the taking lens. The 35mm always has a finer focus scale than the shorter lenses. For example the 35mm lens might focus on the subject indicating 30 feet. That is then easily transferred to the 5.5mm lens which has marks at 15 feet and infinity 1mm apart and a depth of field scale showing 3 feet to infinity in focus at f 1.8 !
What the Eye-Level Focus Finder does is allow one to view the little ground glass focusing image from the back of the camera, rather than the top. At first, it was an accessory for $37.75 in 1952 ($437 today!!) , but eventually all the non-Reflex cameras came with it standard.
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