Horseman 970 Viewing Screen Blurry

Stephen Power · Sep 4, 2020

Hello, greetings from the west of Ireland, and thanks for letting me join the forum.I've posted a bit more about me in introduction thread. Today, I took receipt of my first Topcon Horseman 970 6x9mm camera from a dealer in Japan.

I'm still getting used to it, but, the ground glass viewing screen is hazy and blurry, even when the camera is sharply focused via the rangefinder. I've covered all the prerequisites for viewing on the screen, as far as I can tell. The shutter is cocked, the tab is pulled out to open the aperture and it is set at the widest (f3.5). But it's just a hazy blur.

The rest of the camera looks to be in good shape and working well. The glass is clean and does not appear to have been taken apart.

I'm hoping that I'm just doing something silly (or not doing something important). Any thoughts would be welcome.

Stephen

Dan Daniel · Sep 4, 2020

First, welcome.

It may take a bit to figure out things like this but be patient and accept that you will get fifteen different answers for one problem. And then of those fifteen answers, three or more people will get into pissing matches that have nothing to do with your question. In other words, it's the internet. Just keep reading and asking and you'll get there eventually.

Silly question in a way but needs to be asked- is there a rear element on the lens? Remove the lens board and check.

So you focus by the rangefinder. Is the cam for the same focal length as the lens? What if you ignore the rangefinder and rack the lens back and forth as far as it will go? Does it come into focus somewhere along the line?

Those are my beginning points- the lens is incomplete and incapable of forming an image, or the lens is simply not where it should be by a long shot (a half inch here or there and you'd probably notice some sort of image).

After that, need to consider the ground glass and fresnel setup, but that's for later.

ic-racer · Sep 4, 2020

Did it come with the manual?
Normally you would focus with the ground glass. Is that possible?
Otherwise to use the rangefinder you would want to set it up via the manual. I don't have the manual but it should be color coded (dot on lens, writing on cam and color of infinity stop should all match). For example, the 150 SUPER goes on ORANGE. From you picture, I don't think they ever made a 150mm "PROFESSIONAL TOPCON"; I can't see the focal length of the lens.
Either way, I suspect you are at the wrong infinity stop for that lens, whichever lens it is.

Stephen Power · Sep 4, 2020

Dan Daniel said:
First, welcome.

Thank you.

Dan Daniel said:
It may take a bit to figure out things like this but be patient and accept that you will get fifteen different answers for one problem. And then of those fifteen answers, three or more people will get into pissing matches that have nothing to do with your question. In other words, it's the internet. Just keep reading and asking and you'll get there eventually.

If you check my 'hello' post, you see I'm not new to forums or even the '10 different photographers will give you 10 different answers' notion - in fact I often use that in my own teaching. But, I'm hoping for experience rather than opinion (I use that, too).

Dan Daniel said:
Silly question in a way but needs to be asked- is there a rear element on the lens? Remove the lens board and check.

I already did, and even gave it a clean as it was abit dusty. Yes, there is a rear element.

Dan Daniel said:
So you focus by the rangefinder. Is the cam for the same focal length as the lens?

Yes.

Dan Daniel said:

What if you ignore the rangefinder and rack the lens back and forth as far as it will go? Does it come into focus somewhere along the line?

Click to expand...

No, I can't get it to focus by racking the lens and looking through the screen at all, just a hazy blur.

Dan Daniel said:

Those are my beginning points- the lens is incomplete and incapable of forming an image, or the lens is simply not where it should be by a long shot (a half inch here or there and you'd probably notice some sort of image).
After that, need to consider the ground glass and fresnel setup, but that's for later.

Click to expand...

Thanks for all the advice. I'll take the lens off tomorrow and make sure I've got it set up correctly on the rails. It seems to be all there, but your suggestion that it's not set up correctly is making a lot of sense. Off for my beauty sleep.

Stephen

Click to expand...

reddesert · Sep 4, 2020

Read the manual and learn what the infinity stop is and how to set the lens at it. Unless the lens is at the right place on the focusing rail, the rangefinder will not be accurate. I think your lens is pulled out far enough that it won't be focused at infinity, it will be focused at some very near distance. (Since it's f/3.5, I'm guessing it's a 105mm, which means the lens should be roughly 105mm from the ground glass to achieve infinity focus).

Stephen Power · Sep 4, 2020

ic-racer said:
Did it come with the manual?

I've sent for one. For now I'm using a downloaded one for the 980, it's very similar.

ic-racer said:
Normally you would focus with the ground glass. Is that possible? Otherwise to use the rangefinder you would want to set it up via the manual.

No, it won't focus with the ground glass, just a hazy blur all the time. I'm using the rangefinder to focus. It seems to work OK.

ic-racer said:
From you picture, I don't think they ever made a 150mm "PROFESSIONAL TOPCON"; I can't see the focal length of the lens. Either way, I suspect you are at the wrong infinity stop for that lens, whichever lens it is.

The lens is Professional Topcor, 105mm f3.5. The colour coding is orange on the cam and on the shutter cocking lever. I've set it up on the orange infinity tabs the ones at the very end of the rails. Perhaps this is wrong? Thanks for the suggestion, I'll try it on red in the morning, but the cam and the lens definitely are orange.

Stephen

Stephen Power · Sep 4, 2020

reddesert said:
Read the manual and learn what the infinity stop is and how to set the lens at it. Unless the lens is at the right place on the focusing rail, the rangefinder will not be accurate. I think your lens is pulled out far enough that it won't be focused at infinity, it will be focused at some very near distance. (Since it's f/3.5, I'm guessing it's a 105mm, which means the lens should be roughly 105mm from the ground glass to achieve infinity focus).

Thanks, see my reply to ic-racer.

shutterfinger · Sep 4, 2020

Your camera is likely the same as https://www.cameramanuals.org/prof_pdf/horseman_vh-r.pdf
Move the front standard along the rails from fully retracted to front edge. You should get infinity focus about the focal length from the ground glass and closer distances within 30mm of that position.
Measure from the aperture/shutter blades to the gg.

Stephen Power · Sep 4, 2020

It's 2am here, but I've just turned the computer back on to say that you guys are amazing, and my issue is solved - thank you very much! As most of you said, I had the infinity focus tab set wrong. What I thought was the orange tabs at the end of the rail, were actually brown. I moved it to the orange tabs - which looked RED to me - and hey presto, perfect focus on the screen. I would get tested for colour-blindness (actually my dad had it), but thankfully I'm only shooting in B/W on the Horseman.

Thanks again - and what a great forum.

Stephen

ic-racer · Sep 4, 2020

Do you have the rollfilm back or sheet film back?

Stephen Power · Sep 5, 2020

ic-racer said:
Do you have the rollfilm back or sheet film back?

I have 2 roll film backs. One (the grey one) seems to be much older than the other and seems to move the film right to left, whereas the black one seems to be a left to right travel (??). It is also much harder to mount on the back. I think I'll stick with the black one for now. Any suggestions welcome.

Horseman 970 Viewing Screen Blurry

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