Argh!! my collapsible sucks!!!

[Kim Coxon]

Hi Ted,
Is there any difference between the performance of either lens on the other body? I both are slightly worse on the Fed, the likely reason is the film plane/flange distance on the Fed. It is quite a common fault.

Kim

I find that an interesting question, Brian. With my FED 2 and its f:3.5 collapsible I have had no trouble getting reasonably sharp images - but then I already knew about locking the lens, so that wasn't a problem. However, I can't answer your question as its the only collapsible I have. Having said that, when I compare images from the FED with its FED lens against images taken with my Zorki 4K with black J8, Zorki wins. I have no idea why, though. Sure, the Zorki with its film advance lever feels like a much more modern camera, but that doesn't mean anything. I use the same hand-held Gossen meter with each camera and use the same film.

Ted

 

[tedwhite]

Kim: Never thought of that. I'll give it a shot. After reading your post I sat down and reviewed prints taken with the FED, Zorki, and the Kiev 4AM (which I just sold to Jan Normandale in Toronto). AS the Kiev had a J8 lens I could at least compare it to the Zorki and its J8 lens. I examined prints from two rolls taken with each camera and the Kiev is hands down the winner here. All exposures with all cameras were metered with a Gossen Sixtomat and the same ISO 400 Agfa color print film was used in each camera. (As I just wrote to Jan, I'm having seller's remorse after looking at the Kiev prints - it really is a classy camera).

And perhaps G'Man gets to the heart of it: FED's are almost always off a bit, and perhaps the superiority of the Kieve camera's images are due to flange to film distance being spot on.

Ted

 

[tedwhite]

Didn't know about the paper shims. Are there paper shims on the Kiev?

 

[Nickfed]

There is only a +/- of .02 mm to play with.

What exactly does this mean?

 

[ZorkiKat]

What exactly does this mean?

That's to say that if the lens flange is displaced by more than 0.02mm, accurate focus will no longer be possible. The surface of the lens flange has to be exactly 28,8mm (give or take an extra 0.02mm) from the focal plane(or the film surface). Anything more than that - or less, if the paper shims get soft and the mount squashes them in - would foul up the focus adjusments. Not obvious when shooting at greater distances, or small apertures, or with wide angle lenses. Not seen on small prints either. But use a large aperture long focus lens for a close-up and you'll see what a displacement of more than 0,02 mm can do. 😉

Jay