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Omega D5XL / Super Chromega Alignment

pstake

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May 5, 2005
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Location
Lincoln, Neb.
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Is anyone a long-time user of this set up, having aligned it enough to give me some guidance?

The picture attached may be misleading. The negative stage needs slight alignment but the bigger problem is the Chromega head, which plainly "leans" to the right, does not sit squarely on the negative stage.

I have attached the instructions from the manual but they don't make much sense to me. I tried to follow the instructions and there was no noticeable change.



 
You will see four screws on the side.

I use a laser aligner for this which makes life easy some put a control negative in the glass carrier that has a negative fogged with scratches on all edges so when projected you can see if the scratch is sharp.

You loosen a couple of the screws which should allow you to move the base that is looking off in your pic.

once all the corners and center are sharp tighten all the screws.

A bit harder than I am writing here but basically its the same principle of leveling off a camera for archetecture work. before you start
getting fancy .
 
Dear pstake,

You have run into the bane of Omega dichroic head owners. Conceptually, adjusting the head alignment is as simple as it looks. The reality is that the design is clumsy and difficult. What I do is loosen all the bits that hold it on, prop up the head so that it aligns well on the negative stage but with the right side ever so slightly higher (it will sag back down when the connections are tight and the support is removed), then tighten it all up. The good news is that once it's done, you should have no problems for years.

Don't forget the screws on the side that control the fore/aft position where the arms connect to the head.



Good luck,

Neal Wydra
 

Thanks, Neal. The instructions point to those two screws for fore/aft adjustment but state to use a hex key/allen wrench for the side/side adjustment. The only allens I see, I don't see how they make any kind of adjustment. I will post a picture in a few.
 
I'm not sure why the photos are displaying turned 90 degrees.




These are the only hex bolts on the "lower right hand lever arm where it is fastened to the cross rod ..." There are two of them, and I tried loosening and tightening and nothing happened.





"The top right lifting arm can be loosened ... the top lever adjustment will critically align the lamphouse to the film stage.





To illustrate proximities.





Negative stage is basically level (I will do critical alignment later)





lamphouse is very NOT level.
 

You need to loosen the lever (by first loosening the grub screw) and spin it slightly on the shaft so that the levers raise the lamphead evenly from side to side and front to back.

I can paraphrase those instructions on how to make it better rather than worse once you loosen the levers:

If the lamphouse is too low on one side then prop up just that side using a shim of some sort. They recommend the edge of the negative holder. With the low side propped up, now the other side is hanging up in the air with no shim under it. Now loosen the levers on the rods and the raised side of the lamphead comes down and makes contact with the stage and takes the twist out of levers. Now retighten and take the negative holder out of the other end and see how it looks now. Repeat if it is still not even.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Thank you to everyone who responded. I followed the instructions again and it worked. I don't understand why it worked and I agree that it's a clumsy design. It does appear to be staying put, however.

Cheers,
Phil
 
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