My First Fed :)

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midniteson

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Hi folks,

Newcomer here 🙂
I've gotten a bit greedy this week, and after years of always wanting one of those delicious looking rangefinders, I've bought a FED 2 and a Leica iiia !

Anyway, the FED turned up this morning, and I've spent the day poilshing and cleaning and removing years of grime, and for the £20 I paid for it, it's scrubbed up rather nice:
fed.jpg


Need to go and find some film tomorrow, I've unearthed an old Watson bulk film loader and an old dev tank, so should be able to post some results soon.
Looking forward to having a play with this camera. The optics are very clean and the shutter seems to be OK !

Cheers,
Martin
 
Shutter curtains seem OK... but it did take me about 4 hours to calibrate the rangefinder ! Just loaded a roll of XP2 to test it whilst I await delivery of some FP4 & ID 11 dev.. fingers crossed 😎
 
Welcome to RFF for a start! That's a nice-looking and quite early FED 2 - no flash-sync for a start. You may the viewfinder a bit dim but that works nicely on a bright day - not so handy indoors but you can't have everything.
 
I too have a FED-2 and am expecting a Leica IIIa.

I expect you know that you shouldn't touch the shutter speed dial unless the shutter is cocked.
 
Put a roll of XP2 through yesterday, just to test everything. First lesson learned... when you remove the shutter speed selector (for cleaning etc), make sure you tighten the grub screws up properly! I thought I was having trouble selecting certain speeds, turns out the selector dial had shifted out of position, obviously giving me the wrong speeds (D'oh)
Anyway, I managed to get a couple of frames
selfportraitwithfed2.jpg


fed2test2.jpg
 
[quote I expect you know that you shouldn't touch the shutter speed dial unless the shutter is cocked.[/quote]



not true for the FED-2...shutter speeds can be changed any time.


wallace
 
"not true for the FED-2...shutter speeds can be changed any time."


In this case he'd probably be better to heed the advice, it's an early model with a one-piece shutter dial. Having looked at the mechanics for most of the FSUs I think they aren't as easily damaged as some people think but I can see how it could happen, so caution would be prudent!
 
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wolves3012 said:
"In this case he'd probably be better to heed the advice, it's an early model with a one-piece shutter dial. Having looked at the mechanics for most of the FSUs I think they aren't as easily damaged as some people think but I can see how it could happen, so caution would be prudent!"
Click to expand...

you are right. I have a Fed 2b. Seems they changed the mechanism with this model in 1957. sorry...

wallace
 
batterytypehah! said:
^What wolves3012 said. Also, it's just a good habit to get into if you also have a Leica, as the OP does.
Click to expand...

This is something I must try and get used to..it's easily forgotten. What if one inadvertently forgets to cock the shutter first? Is it game over instantly (thinking of the Leica here) or is it a cumulative effect?
 
midniteson said:
This is something I must try and get used to..it's easily forgotten. What if one inadvertently forgets to cock the shutter first? Is it game over instantly (thinking of the Leica here) or is it a cumulative effect?
Click to expand...
It's not cumulative, you either break it or you don't. The models at real risk are the ones with slow-speed mechanisms (NOT Leica type here, FSU). If you cock those after you've set the wrong speed you can easily break things or tangle up the slow-speed mechanism (the lever-wind models being the easiest to damage).

Models that don't have slow-speeds aren't really at risk, provided you don't try to force the dial around. Most models have a pin that stops you passing between 1/500th and "B" and it's that pin that will break if you force things. Saying that, many FED 2s don't have the pin in the first place and neither do Leicas. On those cameras, the worst you'll do is to set the speed at something you didn't intend.
 
Well, and here is mine! Just arrived but I thought why not toss it into this thread instead of "Look what just came."

$35 shipped from a US seller on ebay.

Likes: Snappy shutter, curtains look good, glass is clean, RF patch very nice and well-aligned. Industar-26M takes my 40.5mm Contax hood, yay!

Dislikes: Another darn near useless VF for me (I wear glasses but you need to practically creep in there to see the edges even without). Not as clean as it looks here, particularly the lens barrel, and stinks of cigarette smoke. Some gorilla potato-chipped one of the bottom keys and scratched the chrome around the RF bezel. Worst of all, the internal baffles are missing.

I'm thinking I'll shoot the contest with the Zorki, after all, now that I have a FED spool that can be made to fit. Then later I'll build a set of baffles from beer can aluminum or something.

Anybody seen that second flash connector before? (Between lens and RF window)

And: This Industar focuses well below 1 meter! Looks like pretty exactly 2 ft on ground glass, wide open. Not RF coupled below 3 ft, of course.
 

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batterytypehah! said:
Well, and here is mine! Just arrived but I thought why not toss it into this thread instead of "Look what just came."

$35 shipped from a US seller on ebay.

Likes: Snappy shutter, curtains look good, glass is clean, RF patch very nice and well-aligned. Industar-26M takes my 40.5mm Contax hood, yay!

Dislikes: Another darn near useless VF for me (I wear glasses but you need to practically creep in there to see the edges even without). Not as clean as it looks here, particularly the lens barrel, and stinks of cigarette smoke. Some gorilla potato-chipped one of the bottom keys and scratched the chrome around the RF bezel. Worst of all, the internal baffles are missing.

I'm thinking I'll shoot the contest with the Zorki, after all, now that I have a FED spool that can be made to fit. Then later I'll build a set of baffles from beer can aluminum or something.

Anybody seen that second flash connector before? (Between lens and RF window)

And: This Industar focuses well below 1 meter! Looks like pretty exactly 2 ft on ground glass, wide open. Not RF coupled below 3 ft, of course.
Click to expand...
That second flash connector belongs there! Looks like a later-model top cover fitted to an early 2b body. Also tallies with your comments of a dim finder, which earlier ones are much worse for! Does either of the sockets actually work?
 
wolves3012 said:
That second flash connector belongs there! Looks like a later-model top cover fitted to an early 2b body.
Click to expand...

Ah, thanks, that hadn't occurred to me.

wolves3012 said:
Also tallies with your comments of a dim finder, which earlier ones are much worse for!
Click to expand...

It's not that it's dim, but I can't see the edges! Apart from that it's nice. Almost exactly the same green tint as the Contax IIa, and that's before cleaning (probably has smoke deposits on all optical surfaces at this point). Darker than the Zorki though, that's true.

I suppose it was a bit of an engineering challenge back then to make larger finders with decent eye relief. Not even the big bucks (in its day) Contax is particularly good in that regard. I do wish I could have the Vitomatic finder in the Contax body.

wolves3012 said:
Does either of the sockets actually work?
Click to expand...

I may never know! I think I took exactly one flash exposure (not counting the family p&s, of course) all last year, and that was with an SLR. I don't even own a sync cord.

RE: the lens focusing below 1 meter, it occurred to me that it was simply not put together correctly. I have it apart now, per Matt Denton's excellent instructions http://www.mattdentonphoto.com/cameras/industar_relubing/index.html
 
batterytypehah! said:
... Worst of all, the internal baffles are missing.

I'm thinking I'll shoot the contest with the Zorki, after all, now that I have a FED spool that can be made to fit. Then later I'll build a set of baffles from beer can aluminum or something.
Click to expand...

I've got lots of FED2 spare parts form a box of junk bodies from Kim Coxon. If you can pay the shipping, I can send you the parts you need.
 
Thanks Spyderman, I appreciate it! Except at this point, I'm not even sure anything is in fact missing.

Can somebody confirm that there should be baffles left and right of the film gate, covering the curtain drum and rollers, in a FED-2? The Leica and the Zorki both have those, but my web searches as to the FED-2 are inconclusive.

I decided to shoot a test roll, which is not done yet (and I'm not sure how far from done it is -- I found out that the film counter on the FED-2 easily gets disturbed) but will hopefully yield my FSU contest entries. 😱

Viewfinder update: Framing is a bit of a crapshoot but I got lucky with the RF patch, it's nice and clear. Turns out the famed "Contax grip" is also the FED-2 grip.
 
The Fed-2 does not have the baffles present in the Zorki-3/3M and 4. Both curtain drum and rollers are visible when the lens is removed.
 
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