Optar Lens in Rapax Shutter - fit issues?

I have a 2.25 x 3.25 Speed Graphic that has a Graphex #1 shutter with an Optar 101mm lens in it, and the aperture blades gave up the ghost last weekend. I bought a Busch Pressman on Ebay and it arrived today. It's in good shape but I won't shoot with it, since it's a spring back camera. I bought it for the lens, a Velostigmat 101 in a Rapax shutter and I got it for a really good price.

The Optar is in better shape, glass-wise, so I pulled the glass from the shutter and screwed it into the Rapax, and it seems to interfere with the shutter timing operations, even though to my eye the two lenses are identical in size and shape and structure. With the Optar in, it doesn't get slow times, but rather seems to click happily at about 1/200 or higher. With the Velostigmat in, it works perfectly.

I don't see why these should be incompatible. Has anyone else experienced this problem or am I doing something wrong?

A Graphex is a Rapax rebadged.
Take the lens cells out and place them side by side. Are the threaded sections of the lens the same length? Compare front to front, rear to rear.
The face plate to shutter blade distance should be the same on both shutters, as should the rear mount to aperture blades. If the shutters are different depths then the Rapax was special for the Velostigmat.
The Velostigmat was the predecessor to the Raptar/Optar all, shutters and lens, made by Wollensak.

APUGuser19 said:

Yes. You should buy another Rapax or fixed the one you had. So far as the aperture blades going to pot, the thing just needed cleaning. These Graflex lenses can't just be swapped around willy-nilly. Even if everything fit and seemed to work, it still would have been an incorrect combo.Your original mistake is now evident--it was a bad idea. BTDT.

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Are you always this much of a troll? My mother always told me that if you can't say something nice, keep your mouth shut. Or your fingers off the keyboard, in this case.

shutterfinger said:

A Graphex is a Rapax rebadged.
Take the lens cells out and place them side by side. Are the threaded sections of the lens the same length? Compare front to front, rear to rear.
The face plate to shutter blade distance should be the same on both shutters, as should the rear mount to aperture blades. If the shutters are different depths then the Rapax was special for the Velostigmat.
The Velostigmat was the predecessor to the Raptar/Optar all, shutters and lens, made by Wollensak.

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This is what I thought. I stood the two lenses side by side and compared them and as far as I can tell they're identical. I can see no mechanical reason why the one doesn't go into the shutter and the other does not, though I'm hardly an expert on shutter design. The Optar is in better condition, is all. The Velostigmat's not bad so I'll use that.

The uncoated 101mm Velostigmat wouldn't have been supplied in a Rapax shutter, there's an age mismatch I think. The Rapax is a very much newer shutter and appeared after Wollensak started coating their lenses renaming the coated Velostigmats as Optars.

Sounds more like an issue with the Rapax shutter.

Ian

Except that it's the Velostigmat that came in the shutter, and the Optar doesn't fit. The shutter seems to work perfectly (I really won't know for sure until I run film through it) but the Optar makes it not work.

Ian, AFAIK the only difference between the Graphex and Rapax shutters that the 101/4.5 Wolly lenses came in is the face plate. Ones to be sold by Graflex have face plates that say Graphex. Ones to be sold by Wollensak to all comers have face plates that say Rapax.

Wollensak did a big rename in 1946, roughly when they started coating lenses. Velostigmats became Raptars. Raptars sold to Graflex were engraved Optar.

The OP's Velostigmat is older than his Optar so the two may differ slightly in threading etc. May. But this shouldn't affect anything unless the Optar cells go so deep into the Rapax that one contacts the diaphragm's leaves or the shutter's blades. This is easily checked. Otherwise, there's probably no way that the lens' cells can affect shutter timing.

Dan Fromm said:

Ian, AFAIK the only difference between the Graphex and Rapax shutters that the 101/4.5 Wolly lenses came in is the face plate. Ones to be sold by Graflex have face plates that say Graphex. Ones to be sold by Wollensak to all comers have face plates that say Rapax.

Wollensak did a big rename in 1946, roughly when they started coating lenses. Velostigmats became Raptars. Raptars sold to Graflex were engraved Optar.

The OP's Velostigmat is older than his Optar so the two may differ slightly in threading etc. May. But this shouldn't affect anything unless the Optar cells go so deep into the Rapax that one contacts the diaphragm's leaves or the shutter's blades. This is easily checked. Otherwise, there's probably no way that the lens' cells can affect shutter timing.

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I took the two lenses and stood them next to each other, and compared them as one would compare other hardware (after all, it's just a large bolt with glass in the middle, and I deal in hardware, thread pitches and bolts all day long). The two seem absolutely identical, down to how far the rearmost element protrudes from its retaining ring. Shape and size seem to be completely interchangeable. I then removed the rear element and retaining ring from both and swapped them; of course, they both fit perfectly in the other and there was still no difference as far as I can see. Still, the Velostigmat works fine in the shutter and the Optar causes the timing issue.

I haven't dragged out my micrometer, but these two seem utterly identical, and the only difference between the two appears to be the branding stamps. This is what is so puzzling. Maybe the difference is in the shutter? The Graphex has a press to focus lever and the Rapax does not; clearly, the Rapax is an older shutter, so maybe the mechanism is different enough that any even millimetric differences in the lens barrel would cause a physical interference? I don't know enough about it to make such a determination.

Dan Fromm said:

Ian, AFAIK the only difference between the Graphex and Rapax shutters that the 101/4.5 Wolly lenses came in is the face plate. Ones to be sold by Graflex have face plates that say Graphex. Ones to be sold by Wollensak to all comers have face plates that say Rapax.

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My point Dan was the Velostigmat was probably not in it's original shutter which would have most likely been an Alphax. I disagree that the Graphex is just a Rapax with a different face plate, that may be true for some but it very definitely isn't for all, I recently swapped a 90mm WA Raptar cells from a Rapax shutter with no aperture blades into a good Graphex shutter (from a WA Optar). I think both the Rapax and Graphex shutters went through improvements so there's at least two probably three versions, the first Graphex shutters have no flash synch, my #1 Rphax has just X flash syn, where as the late Rapax shutters have 4 position flash sync.

Dan Fromm said:

Wollensak did a big rename in 1946, roughly when they started coating lenses. Velostigmats became Raptars. Raptars sold to Graflex were engraved Optar.

The OP's Velostigmat is older than his Optar so the two may differ slightly in threading etc. May. But this shouldn't affect anything unless the Optar cells go so deep into the Rapax that one contacts the diaphragm's leaves or the shutter's blades. This is easily checked. Otherwise, there's probably no way that the lens' cells can affect shutter timing.

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I have three or four very early Wollensak shutters three are definitely pre-WWI and they are identical threads and spacing to equivalent sized Alphax and Rapax (Graphex) shutters. So the cells from my 170mm f7.7 Kodak Anastigmat (dialyte) in a Wollensak Velosto (UK name for the Optimo) shutter fit my Alpax #1 and Rpax shutters, and vice versa modern cells fit the pre-WWII shutters.

My point is that Wollensak sold their Raptar lenses in Rapax shutters so there shouldn't be an issue at all because the Optar is just a re-badged. So it's odd, however one comment the smaller #0 Graphex and Rapax shutters aren't quite the same overall thickness - the late #0 Rapax is slightly thicker and the black face plate allows the front cell to screw down though it.

Ian

I have as far as I can remember four shutters with lenses. The Graphex/Optar 101 that was the cause of all this nonsense came off my Speed Graphic, the Rapax/Velostigmat 101 that came on the Pressman, a Century with (I think) a 103 something or other on my Century Graphic, and a Velostigmat 101 in an AlphaX shutter. From my observation, the Velostigmat in the AlphaX is completely different to the one in the Rapax, with a black ring around the front element rather than a silver one, and it's not as deep a lens, though it has the same focal length and aperture (101, f/4.5). I'm guessing it's older, or maybe a lower-end version of the Velostigmat because the shutter is a lower-end model?

The Rapax and Graphex are similar shutters but not the same; the Graphex has the push to focus lever and the Rapax does not. The little button on the back that keeps the lens from rotating on the lensboard is in a different place, too, and I had to drill out a new hole in the board to put it on.

The Century and the AlphaX appear quite similar. The AlphaX needs a lube but the Century works perfectly, so I haven't had a need to examine it very closely. I don't use the Century Graphic often as it doesn't have a rangefinder, but that lens is AMAZINGLY sharp at all apertures.

The odd thing about the camera that the Graphex came off of is that I cannot find a serial number anywhere on the camera, so I can't gauge the age of the unit. I'm sure there's a list somewhere of lens/shutter production years based on serial numbers, but the camera itself I have no idea. Also, I can't for the life of me remember where I got the camera. So I have no traceability there, either.

http://www.cameraeccentric.com/html/info/wollensak_2.html states that Rapax shutters were available with or without flash synchronization.
The indexing pin on the rear of the shutter is 90° apart from the Rapax and Graphex but they are mechanically the same.
http://www.southbristolviews.com/pics/Graphic/manual-pdf/GraphexShutterService.pdf

When mounted in the shutter do both the Velostigmat and Optar contact the same place on the shutter front or is the Optar barrel slightly narrower in diameter?

shutterfinger said:

http://www.cameraeccentric.com/html/info/wollensak_2.html states that Rapax shutters were available with or without flash synchronization.
The indexing pin on the rear of the shutter is 90° apart from the Rapax and Graphex but they are mechanically the same.
http://www.southbristolviews.com/pics/Graphic/manual-pdf/GraphexShutterService.pdf

When mounted in the shutter do both the Velostigmat and Optar contact the same place on the shutter front or is the Optar barrel slightly narrower in diameter?

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Thanks for those links. Do you mean the front of the barrel? The two lenses appear to be exactly the same physical dimensions -- front and rear elements, length, thread count, everything appears to be completely interchangeable. I don't have them in front of me, or I'd pull out my digital caliper and verify them but from my perusal last night they appear to be dimensionally identical. This is why I'm so puzzled by the fit issues and the fact that the Optar seems to cause interference in the operation of the Rapax.

Chadinko said:

Do you mean the front of the barrel?

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Yes, the outside diameter of the front barrel. I'll extend that to all dimensions of the front barrels.

The linked service manual has assembly errors for the #1 shutter. The parts assembly sequence is out of order. The #2 shutter has more parts than the #1 but assembly order is correct for the #2 so follow them for the #1 shutter skipping the steps for the parts not used in the #1.

Just for S&G unscrew the Optar a partial turn, just a tweak. If that allow the shutter to fire,
check the focus. Could it need a shim?

That's a good idea. I'll try that -- tomorrow... it's late here now, so I'll give it a shot. Maybe a small washer.