Linhof wide angle focusing device - non parallel?

[Marco Gilardetti]

Gentle fellows, please excuse the cross-posting with the Large Format Photography Forum of few days ago, but with my amazement nobody could reply there.

I recently acquired a Linhof wide angle focusing device. This acessory is very sturdy and seems absolutely impossible to break or bend, BUT it seems to me that the front standard and the back plate are not parallel and I can't understand if this is intentional or not. I checked pictures of other units on the internet, but almost all of them are taken in perspective view and it is impossible for me to judge.

Attached you'll find an atrocious picture of my wide angle focusing device, taken with a cellphone directly at the camera repair shop, so please pardon the quality. Although out of focus, I think it is clearly visible that the slot beteween the front moving part and the rear plate is larger at the bottom and narrower at the top. The difference is 1 mm approximately. The same difference is measurable at the front standard and the back with a caliber.

Can please other owners of a wide angle focusing device check their unit and see if this is normal?

Does anybody know if there is some way to compensate this? Perhaps the two rods on which the front standard moves back and forth are eccentric and adjustable?

Thank you very much.

 

[AgX]

What counts is not the slot but the two flanges.

It should not be that difficult to check for parallelity by placing the back side on true flat plane (as a glass pane), put a ruler vertically on the upper side and measure the height at the two sides with another ruler. Repeat this after rotating the first ruler by 90°.

Keep also in mind that the importance of planes parallelity often is exaggerated. We typically do not metrology or reprographic work.

 

[Marco Gilardetti]

Thank you for your answer. As said in my post, I also measured the distance between the front standard and the back, and there is the same 1 mm displacement that can be seen at the slot. Also, this accessory has to be used with ultra-wide-angles, and 1 mm of unwanted ultra-wide-angle tilt is *a lot* of tilt. More in general, 1mm of parallelism error in a Linhof would be an *astronomic* error: these cameras are machined with the same precision of a measuring tool.

Can someone please check on his/her wide angle focusing device if it is also tilted by approximately 1mm, which would mean that this is normal/intentional? Thank you.

 

[Shootar401]

As I don't have the Linhof wide angle attachment I can't comment from experience. But I bought some made-in-china wide angle helicoid focusing board for my Technika to use with my 65mm and it fits just like my Linhof branded boards, with no tilt. Maybe it's intentntional on those boards?