Camera Talk

I liked this camera since I saw it, the knobs are super cool!!

The first time I got one in my hands was from a local dealer who said 'everything works', what he didn't say was that everything works badly. So I waited and two week ago I checked another in 'optimal' conditions, lens fine, shutter doable, bellows ok, green corrosion everywhere. Warm-mild water plus soap for leather, black mate kiwi, coconut oil, metal polisher and q-tips, some hours later. First shots were mostly out of focus, no worthy to show, now Im taking the time needed for measuring correctly, lets see how it goes

That's a beauty.

That cleaned up nicely, Alex. I hope you get a lot of good photos with it.

PF

Beautiful folder. Hope you get it to work as if new.

Before was the outside, now the inside of the camera.

I dismounted and serviced the shutter, Compur type with T, B, 1 to 250.
After I started with the focusing mechanisms, here its focused to minimum distance, those two inner rails have old dry grease, I could move but not as free as it should, so first of all is to free the shutter plate from the focusing arm shown at left. The plate is already free from the focusing arm and we can see the chain which pull the shutter plate to the front (exit way), the pulling is done by the big spring that you can see in the first picture. There is a circle metal piece that pick up the chain around itself thanks to that spring. Here its out of the camera body, those rails along the front plate have being cleaned and lubed again. Detail from the pulling mechanism, the chain is picked up through the groove of that "wheel", old grease everywhere to be cleaned. After clean the lower shutter plate, two complete turns of that wheel have to be done to get enough pulling strength. And reattached now to the rails carefully. The most difficult part was to put in place the focusing arm to the shutter plate:
Shutter plate already pulling to escape + spring to close the focusing arm + washer + leveler + focusing arm+ screw The shutter had three metal shims plus one handmade cardboard shim, also the shutter place isn't perpendicular to the film plate, about 0.6-0.7mm of difference which is a lot, so on the lower part I put two quarter 0.3mm shims plus the 3 metal shims, the collimation looked good with the DSRL, now its it to test the camera and see...

Thank you for watching, I love to work in this camera!

It's coming along nicely.

PF

Ok, I got the results from the new collimation, as usual I did some pictures at my favourite building and here are the frames comparison.
Same settings 100 f11, same film Ilford Delta 100.
In order left side of the negatives, centre negatives, right side of the negatives, guess which one (left or right) is the after collimation.
Right side of the negative improved dramatically since I discovered a difference of 0.64mm between the left and right side of the shutter plate holder (not 100% parallel to the film plate) so I added the correct amount of shims to that part, it seems I did it alright.

Btw, when opening the Inos II I saw that the shutter holder, in its inner side has some stripes (about 1mm thick to the inside) and the second holder part (the ones attached to the bellows) has similar (but to the outside) so when put them together and secured from the inside as usual (screw shutter ring) they fit perfectly and you can see how the bellows front (next to the shutter) can be moved just 2mm left/right from the shutter. When I saw it I thought I assembled incorrectly or I did not torque enough but then I remembered that reading somewhere about this camera, I read something like it was designed to avoid the vacuum effect when you open the camera, and this is how Voitglander did it, light tight guaranteed (after this roll test) can enter from this "gap" but allows the camera's bellows to "breath" instead of taking the film to the inside. Or just I did it wrong and I try to look for an excuse
So far I do as PF recommended me once with bellows, first half wind after shooting, second wind part before next shooting, and never wind with the bellows closed.
Next roll I will test this, two pics in a row. To be continued...

Thank you for watching and reading.

A little goes a long way. Looking good.

Voigtlander could out-engineer anybody!

PF

The right side (after collimation) looks very well. You got a nice working classic.