Nikon FM focus issue

Nicholas Lindan said:

is Blue Moon going to load the camera with film

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Ian C said:

In the photo of post #3, nothing appears critically focused as I view it. There seems to be a focus disparity among scene elements at approximately the SAME distance from the lens? Note the extreme and abrupt focus difference between the head and tail of the dog. These appear not much different in distance from the lens. Even if this had been shot with a fast lens at a fully opened aperture, the apparent focus difference due to shallow depth of field wouldn’t look like that.

This makes me wonder about the flatness of the film. I’d check the function of the pressure plate. It must hold the film flat and in register against the film rails above and below the opening to the shutter.

If this is a pressure plate problem, it wouldn’t be seen through the viewfinder. It would be useful to state both the lens and the aperture setting used.

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koraks said:

In cases like these, I prefer to out the camera on a tripod, open the back and visually inspect the projected image on the film plane with a piece of ground glass. A final check after repairs would have to be done with film, but the ground glass approach makes a repair effort much quicker.

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250swb said:

The mirror or prism alignment only affects what you think you are seeing, not the actual photograph which is the lens projecting light onto the film. The mirror cannot distort the image, especially because it is out of the way when the exposure is made. So it's either the pressure plate, lens mount, or lens. Of those it's easy to check the body, which I assume the OP has done, so my guess would be the lens and perhaps an element has shifted or not been seated properly if its been cleaned.

We don't even know the type of lens the OP was using and some aftermarket zooms can be pretty awful out of the box, and shooting wide open exaggerates the problems.

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skylight1b said:

Just to note, across 3 different rolls of film, 4 different lenses were tried, all of which work fine (great actually) with another FM and FM2. I'm leaning toward a pressure plate issue at this point.

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bernard_L said:

The film gate rails define the film plane. The pressure plate just needs to be present and... press the film; but no critical alignment for that component.

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250swb said:

But you know, you give a camera to a friend and then try to report on problems without any actual hands on experience and it's a crap shoot as to the cause.

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