Would you return this folder?

[loccdor]

Pictured is the lens/film plane alignment. It becomes closer to a right angle when I apply pressure on the lens, it's hard to notice if you don't know what to look for, but in my experience this misalignment would throw quite a lot of one side of an image out of focus. It has a good f/2.8 Zeiss Tessar, and the rangefinder is accurate.

Would you return this folder?

 

[Rick A]

First I would determine if the lens aligned with the film plane. If not, then yes send it back.

 

[runswithsizzers]

Your green lines in the first photo compare the lens to the folding door, and not to the film plane. The door may or may not be 90 degrees to the film plane.

But eyeballing it, the lens and film plane do not appear to be in good alignment except when you push it into place with your finger.

Is there no way to shim or adjust the door mechanism?

 

[loccdor]

The camera has a focus mechanism that slides the lens in or out against the door, so in this case the door would have to be 90 degrees to the film plane. As best as I can tell from looking at all angles and comparing it to an aluminum square, it is 90 degrees. I'm not handy enough with precision parts to adjust folders.

 

[retina_restoration]

Many old folders like this have some cant to the lens board. I have a Vollenda 620 W/Xenar that has a similar amount of tilt to it and yet it still produces sharp images across the image plane. Mind you, I don't use apertures larger than f5.6 so that is a factor. At f11 the images are razor sharp, side to side.
Test it and see what you get, then decide. You may find the tilt has little (or none) effect on image sharpness. If it was expensive, that would influence my decision (more likely to return it) but if it was under $50, I'd be more inclined to keep it.

 

[loccdor]

Test it and see what you get, then decide. You may find the tilt has little (or none) effect on image sharpness. If it was expensive, that would influence my decision (more likely to return it) but if it was under $50, I'd be more inclined to keep it.

Fair enough, I will have to put a roll of film through it. Thanks for the perspective.

 

[loccdor]

Just wanted to follow up with this. I put a roll of Aviphot 200 through the camera. The roll came out fat and leaked light, but that was due to my own loading error and I don't expect it to be a problem going forward. There's also a minor light leak in the camera which seems to be coming from the shiny film door latch, I experienced similar on my Mamiya 645 - it shouldn't be difficult to fix. With those two caveats out of the way:

The lens misalignment had less impact than I expected. In fact, I took several identical pairs of shots, one putting pressure on the lens to put it more into parallel alignment, the other with no pressure. The ones with no pressure were always perfectly sharp in the center, the ones with pressure were generally somewhat unsharp across all except the very edge of the frame. The alignment is only apparent at f/2.8 and f/4, stopped down to f/5.6 it's almost gone. Since the lens tilts down, it could actually be an advantage when taking a typical landscape shot as more of the ground will be in focus. At f/11, the lens is quite sharp across the whole frame.

But even at f/2.8, and near the minimum focus distance, it's surprisingly sharp in the center! With fantastic out of focus rendering. Good old Tessars.

 

[koraks]

In cases like these, I put the camera on a tripod, open the back, put a piece of ground glass against the film gate and then look what's going on. With a decent loupe it's generally pretty easy to see if there's an alignment problem and if so, how bad it is.