Nition
Newbie
I recently inherited a Super Paxette in excellent condition. The light meter in particular works flawlessly and fast. I've given my GF1 a break and I've been using this as my main camera for a little while, and it's been great to work out the fully-manual operation; how you copy the settings from the light meter to the lens, dialing in the rangefinder (I haven't used a rangefinder before), or how something inside whirs away loudly if you use a long shutter time.
It does have a few minor issues which I haven't been able to find answers for. The main one is that the aperture ring on the front of the lens is misaligned. It works, but e.g. what's actually 2.0 might line up with the text saying 5.6. That whole part of the lens is able to unscrew, but it needs to screw on a little bit tighter to line up, and it's already as tight as it seems to go.
I had a look and it doesn't seem to have any dirt in it, but it could be something very fine. I noticed that people are selling their Super Paxettes for next to nothing anyway so I could always swap out the lens. Does anyone recommend a specific lens? The one it came with is a "Braun - Super - Ultralit" F2.0 50mm.
The other thing is that focus at infinity is very soft. I wonder if that's caused by the lens being misaligned. Sometimes the point of focus is a little bit unexpected in general, and maybe the rangefinder needs aligning too (although that shouldn't affect infinity focus). I can't find any real information on how you actually align the rangefinder on these models either.
Some of the better images:
The lens is pretty swirly sometimes. Check out the circular bokeh on the carpet.
Good focus AND good light levels for once.
DOF testing. It's not swirly this time even though the settings are much the same.
The leaves show how the focus is nice and sharp when focusing close. Unfortunately focusing at infinity instead is pretty bad.
It does have a few minor issues which I haven't been able to find answers for. The main one is that the aperture ring on the front of the lens is misaligned. It works, but e.g. what's actually 2.0 might line up with the text saying 5.6. That whole part of the lens is able to unscrew, but it needs to screw on a little bit tighter to line up, and it's already as tight as it seems to go.
I had a look and it doesn't seem to have any dirt in it, but it could be something very fine. I noticed that people are selling their Super Paxettes for next to nothing anyway so I could always swap out the lens. Does anyone recommend a specific lens? The one it came with is a "Braun - Super - Ultralit" F2.0 50mm.
The other thing is that focus at infinity is very soft. I wonder if that's caused by the lens being misaligned. Sometimes the point of focus is a little bit unexpected in general, and maybe the rangefinder needs aligning too (although that shouldn't affect infinity focus). I can't find any real information on how you actually align the rangefinder on these models either.
Some of the better images:
The lens is pretty swirly sometimes. Check out the circular bokeh on the carpet.
Good focus AND good light levels for once.
DOF testing. It's not swirly this time even though the settings are much the same.
The leaves show how the focus is nice and sharp when focusing close. Unfortunately focusing at infinity instead is pretty bad.
mbisc
Silver Halide User
Looks like the camera is in beautiful condition -- time for a CLA, though, to get the inside beautiful, too.