Aaaaalright, this camera has dragged me along on a bit of an odyssey, and I suppose it's finally time to see if anyone on here can help me out.
Long story short: I bought a GS645 on eBay, knowing full well that it would need a bellows replacement. I shot a test roll anyway, and noticed that focus was off as well. As planned, I sent it off to a somewhat legendary repairer of Fuji rangefinders. Let's call him X.
After a long and rather interesting experience on which I won't elaborate, I got the camera back, and ran another roll through it. Sadly, the focus issues were still there - and I discovered that they weren't just focus issues, but rather massive field curvature. For example, at the infinity stop, the borders of the image are in focus but the center is way past infinity. If focus is set at, say, 15 feet, again the edges will be in focus at 15ft but the center is damn close to infinity. Like I said, massive! I'd have pegged it for some sort of heavy film flatness issue, but it's visible even on ground glass (the infinity stop is way past infinity).
Guessing that the problem might be with my lens elements, X was kind enough to send me a spare set of front and rear cells. Same issue. Sigh. That leaves me with two possibilities:
1. Someone accidentally flipped an element in one of the cells. I did notice that the front element of the front cell is pretty easily removed...but what are the odds that it happened on both sets?
2. More likely, there's something funky going on with the spacing between the cells within the shutter/aperture...column? I tested this out a bit by unscrewing the front cell, and found that by moving it out quite a bit (around two full turns or nearly a full millimeter), infinity focus was correct on the ground glass. Unfortunately, I have no way to properly shim it that far out, so it's wobbly and therefore won't really give me any conclusive results if I shoot film with it.
Or...maybe it is a film flatness issue.
According to X, there are never shims inside these cameras, so it's unlikely that one fell out at any point. He's offered to take another look at it, but I'd like to give it a shot on here first. I wasn't able to find anything in the repair manual that would suggest there's a non-shim way to adjust the spacing between the cells...but something must have happened to make it this way. Hopefully one of you has some experience with this!
Long story short: I bought a GS645 on eBay, knowing full well that it would need a bellows replacement. I shot a test roll anyway, and noticed that focus was off as well. As planned, I sent it off to a somewhat legendary repairer of Fuji rangefinders. Let's call him X.
After a long and rather interesting experience on which I won't elaborate, I got the camera back, and ran another roll through it. Sadly, the focus issues were still there - and I discovered that they weren't just focus issues, but rather massive field curvature. For example, at the infinity stop, the borders of the image are in focus but the center is way past infinity. If focus is set at, say, 15 feet, again the edges will be in focus at 15ft but the center is damn close to infinity. Like I said, massive! I'd have pegged it for some sort of heavy film flatness issue, but it's visible even on ground glass (the infinity stop is way past infinity).
Guessing that the problem might be with my lens elements, X was kind enough to send me a spare set of front and rear cells. Same issue. Sigh. That leaves me with two possibilities:
1. Someone accidentally flipped an element in one of the cells. I did notice that the front element of the front cell is pretty easily removed...but what are the odds that it happened on both sets?
2. More likely, there's something funky going on with the spacing between the cells within the shutter/aperture...column? I tested this out a bit by unscrewing the front cell, and found that by moving it out quite a bit (around two full turns or nearly a full millimeter), infinity focus was correct on the ground glass. Unfortunately, I have no way to properly shim it that far out, so it's wobbly and therefore won't really give me any conclusive results if I shoot film with it.
Or...maybe it is a film flatness issue.
According to X, there are never shims inside these cameras, so it's unlikely that one fell out at any point. He's offered to take another look at it, but I'd like to give it a shot on here first. I wasn't able to find anything in the repair manual that would suggest there's a non-shim way to adjust the spacing between the cells...but something must have happened to make it this way. Hopefully one of you has some experience with this!
