kiev4/J8 - backfocus?

On minimal focus distance 0.9m focused lens shows 0.9m +/-1cm, meaning rangefinder and lens marking at least in synch. Which leaves under suspicion a) mount shims or/and b) lens shims. Collimation is the answer? How to distinguish 2 cases?
 
Measure the flange distance and see if its in spec, if it is, then then lens needs shim attention..............
 
I'd like the whole set K4/J8/H103/J9/J12 CLAd and each lens shimmed to the body (yes, I like shooting my kiev that much). Anybody has experience with this? How much I am expected to pay?
 
Daniel -

Thank you very much for information, it's exactly kind of info I was looking for. I already have J8 and J9, looking for H103 and J12. I never had consistent results from J8 though I like very much its rendering (my silver J9 from year 61 is very consistent and I believe is spot on focus - I got sharp results starting from f2.8, I was able to enlarge 40x30cm from that negatives).
$15 per lens is godsend given it helps (I mean if backfocus in my case is eliminated). What actually holds me back is that you got lenses back still with front focus problem.
As far as I understand price for the set of a body and 4 lenses will be ~$100 + ~$50 s/h?

Igor
 
Not a big deal to set the flange distance yourself, a quality depth micrometer is about 25-35 bucks on ebay and you get to keep the tool when your done. Russ's site is down for the time being so i dont know the spec, plus he had instructions on how to do it..............it makes it so much better with everything to spec, then you can use any lens with any body.
 
Still, I would reccomend picking a spec and setting a body to it then the lenses. Reason being, the future might bring another body to the line up.
 
Hmmmm ...... good and interesting information, yes what a problem! I only have one body so im talking out of turn then. But......when a camera and lens is setto each other, wonderful results!
 
I have Contax bodies, and my first mis-adventure with focusing was a Sonnar 1.5 that was way out of focus, and at the time I didn't know how to adjust them, and a very well known lens dealer bought it for a song on the bay, and yes I stated the lens would not focus properly, and boy did he get a good deal, and the lens was mint, and I can kick myself in the butt, and boy is this a runon sentence. Then I discovered the forums and proceeded to adjust my own lenses and found it to be quite easy. The advantage I have is that I own all Contax bodies, and I think they were probably held to a much closer tolerance than the Kiev's. On half a dozen bodies all my lenses will interchange.
A Russian-American friend of mine showed me a paper, in cyrillic, supplied with a Jupiter lens that stated the lens may have to be adjusted for the camera it is to be used on, so obviously the Arsenal provided disclaimers. Bottom line is it's pretty easy to adjust the lenses and mounts yourself, and the suggestion that you use a uniform distance for all I think is a good one. I would try to use the Contax spec as a standard, if we can determine what the Contax spec is. Stu
 
Spec a moving target? I think not unless you believe the crap spouted on one repairman's site! How the heck can one expect an interchangeable lens system to work without it? The difficulty is that the nature of the Contax mount makes it difficult to measure the 34.85mm film to flange distance. You have to reference from the external bayonet lugs, not the top of the inner mount. I use a machinist's depth gauge which gets me to within 1/1000" (.025mm)

I'm certain most of the lens mount problems arise from repairmen that are careless regarding correct replacement of the factory-placed shims on the mount.
 
Mike, do you mean that the parts of a Contax camera dont have to be cleaned with a sub-atomic laser blaster followed by a deutronium bath? And the lube isn't distilled from the earwax of a wombat?
 
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