Oh why oh why.... did I buy another Nikon S2

Focus

Focus

thompsonks said:
...I'd asked him to collimate the lenses for close focus at f1.4 & f2, respectively. I thought that was the way the old Nikkors were originally calibrated?
Kirk
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Over time body castings shrink , this moves the lens closer to the film plane
And can cause focus to be slightly off .

Try the lenses with your s3 2000 when it comes back , probably no issue as it is a new camera .
 
Maybe it's the shim washers when I worked on my S3 there were three thin washers
behind the lens mount and the body, if they weren't put back in the same order the
focusing would be off.

Range
 
I believe that used to be referred to as "manufacturing tolerances" and everything from cameras to cars were adjustable !
Regards,Peter
 
Vickko said:
Oh why oh why.... did I buy another Nikon S2?
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We all like a dopamine fix from time to time :D:D:D

thompsonks said:
He couldn't get the focus just right with 50 & 85 Nikkors, so he didn't charge me. I'd asked him to collimate the lenses for close focus at f1.4 & f2, respectively. I thought that was the way the old Nikkors were originally calibrated?
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Just a few thoughts... the problem might be with the camera rather than the lenses. Do you know if DAG also checked the flange to film distance and rangefinder base length?

* Under the three screws used to attach the lens mount onto the camera body, there are thin shims in-between the camera body and lens mount to ensure the correct flange to film distance. Each position is shimmed individually and there can be several shims of varying thicknesses under each screw. If the lens mount has been removed at some point and these shims jumbled up at reassembly, your camera's flange to film distance may not be correct.

* Unlike the single rangefinder unit in the SP and S3, the rangefinder in an S2 is two separate pieces - main prism block and half mirror arm. The position of these two pieces relative to each other inside the camera determines the base length. If the main prism block and half mirror arm were removed and reinstalled at some point, they may no longer be in the correct position relative to each other. From personal experience, I know that the position of the main prism block is pretty much fixed, but there is a little bit of wiggle room when replacing the half mirror arm (about 1-2mm left to right and front to back).
 
why did i buy 2 M's

why did i buy 2 M's

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Highway 61 said:
I recently played with my S2 in my bathtube and I can confirm that it shrinks. I don't recommend to use water over 25C.
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The trick is to play with both the S2 AND the lens (and the film!) in the water at the same time so they all shrink by the same amount ;)
 
Highway 61 said:
I recently played with my S2 in my bathtube and I can confirm that it shrinks. I don't recommend to use water over 25C.
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The change is slight , however it effects the flange to film plane distance .
Most Nikon rangefinder cameras achieve infinity focus at 50 - 100 foot setting .
In other words you are moving the lens out to compensate for the change in the casting . Depth of field takes care of it in most cases .
All the talk of haveing lenses collimated is a waste of time if the flange focal plane distance is not reset to factory spec .
Don't stay up at night worrying about it , as in most cases it is not noticed .
 
I don't think that body castings could shrink at all by any measurable abount nor by an amount which would affect focus. Perhaps through atomic decay they lose mass over a few million years but photography hasn't gotten there yet. Now, wear and tear on the mount itself could reduce the registration by a few thousandths of an inch but in this case we're talking the thickness of the film emulsion itself so again, not much. The overall dimensional difference between the camera body only a few hundred degrees below the point at which the metals soften and absolute zero would be less than 2mm overall so shrinkage within the ~100C degrees that human life exists at would not be a factor.
I'd love to see actual measured results of material shrinkage not due to wear that has occurred on a ~60 year old camera.
The differences between warm and cold shooting would be due to film flatness, I believe.
As for GAS, everyone should have an S2! I just sold mine but as soon as I can afford it, I'm going to get another one.

Phil Forrest
 
That is why I favour FSU cameras as the legendary Sergei Korolev solved the shrinking body casting problem that afflicted the Japanese cameras of the 1940s and 1950s ;-)
 
Below are two versions of the same picture shot in November 2010 using a 1955 Nikon S2 and a Nikkor-S-C 50/1.4 of the same vintage. Aperture was f/2 and focus was made on the left eye iris (my usual technique for close-up portraits, and the large RF patch of the Nikon RF bodies is very convenient for this, dare I say, more than the Leica M one).

Film was Fuji Neopan 1600 exposed @800 and processed in Microphen.

First, downsized to 800x600. Second, 100% central crop of the untouched TIFF file. The negative was scanned with a Minolta Dual Scan II 2820dpi film scanner.

Let's say that the camera body shrinkage is not very obvious here. But this was shot fourteen months ago so we cannot be too sure, can we ?

segafredo.jpg


crop100.jpg
 
"All the talk of having lenses collimated is a waste of time if the flange focal plane distance is not reset to factory spec ."

I don't really understand this yet. I thought lenses were collimated with the lens on the camera body? Some repair folks use a mirror and some load it with film? DAG actually takes test shots afterwards on film to see if he's got it right, which is one reason he takes so darned long. He said he'd done this with my body and lenses three times, without being quite satisfied with the results.

BTW, was I correct in thinking that RF Nikkors came from the factory calibrated for close focus at widest aperture, whereas Leica & Zeiss use 2.8?

Kirk
 
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