Rotating Back on Super Speed Graphic

[sooner]

Hi Folks,

Partly on the basis of all the good advice on this forum, I took the plunge and bought a Super Speed Graphic on the Bay, and it finally arrived yesterday. I'll admit it took me a while to figure out how to cock the shutter, being used to little MF folders, but one thing I can't figure out is how to rotate the graflok back to the vertical perspective, which I thought it could do. I did remove the ground glass altogether, but can't seem to reattach it vertically. Any hints would be appreciated, and other hints for better results. I also loaded my first film last night, and so far so good. I'm very excited!

 

[Gumby]

On the upper left, near the main part of the body, is a lever. Move the lever to release and rotate the back.

 

[Gumby]

Flip the lever into the original position to lock the back into the new orientation.

 

[sooner]

Got it! Thanks, guys. It's funny, I hadn't even noticed that little dark lever until I went looking for it just now upon reading your instructions. Thanks again.

 

[Al Kaplan]

Make sure that you check the focus. If the rangefinder cam isn't exactly matched to that particular lens it won't track correctly. There was a time when your friendly neighborhood camera repair guy, the one who was upstairs over the cobbler shop and next door to where your wife brought the toaster to get the heating element replaced knew how, and might have even done it while you watched.

The older Speed Graphics had a focal plane shutter which would work with any lens, with or without its own shutter, and it had a top speed of 1/1000 second. The Super Speed had a special high speed leaf shutter in the "normal" lens.

Press cameras and their original lenses tend to get seperated from one another over the years, and then get recombined with other lenses, and the focusing cam will not be a perfect match. Adjust the rangefinder to focus the lens at ten feet and since indoors you'd be using flash, outdoors the sun shone bright, that was "close enough" at f/8 or f/11. You'd probably soon be ignoring the rangefinder completely, focussing by scale, and abandoning the little squinty finder in favor of the open wire sports finder.