To Bronica RF 645 users on the 135mm lens

B

brian steinberger

Established
Local time
1:45 PM
Joined
Mar 5, 2007
Messages
133
I just purchased a used Bronica RF645 with both the 45 and 65 lenses and love it! I have recently come across a good deal on the 135mm lens. I know that Bronica had problems with the 135 lens due to focussing, so they discontinued it and instread introduced a 100mm lens. I'm not interested in a 100mm lens. But, is there any way I can purcahase the 135 lens and send my camera somewhere to have it calibrated with the new lens for perfect focussing. I've heard in other forums that this is possible. Has anyone else done this with the 135 lens and where can this be done? Thanks alot!
 
Hi Brian, and welcome to RFF. I heard that the people doing the mating of the 135 lens to camera body is an British shop. I don't know if they still do it. If you buy the 135 lens you may jsut get lucky and have the tolerances work out fine as is.
 
brian steinberger said:
I just purchased a used Bronica RF645 with both the 45 and 65 lenses and love it! I have recently come across a good deal on the 135mm lens. I know that Bronica had problems with the 135 lens due to focussing, so they discontinued it and instead introduced a 100mm lens. I'm not interested in a 100mm lens. But, is there any way I can purchase the 135 lens and send my camera somewhere to have it calibrated with the new lens for perfect focussing. I've heard in other forums that this is possible. Has anyone else done this with the 135 lens and where can this be done? Thanks a lot!
Click to expand...

I've owned a 135 for a while. To my shame I've not done anything with it yet. I have thought about the issue of calibration and plan to do a bit of testing before deciding whether to send it to intro2020. Here's some of my thoughts on the matter:

1. Depending on how the engineering tolerances stack up I may be able to live with the existing state of affairs. A bit of testing with a roll of film will reveal how well the rangefinder is aligned.

2. I have read that the results of calibration can be disappointing (wish I find the original posts). To put it another way, focusing is still not that precise and you still need to learn the quirks and compensate for them.

3. If you mount a 135mm lens on a body configured for 100mm then it's the framelines for the latter that appear. A bit more testing will reveal how these relate to the 135mm field of view - obviously a smaller rectangle within that which appears.

4. I want to be able to use the 100mm as well and I'd rather guess the 135mm coverage from the 100mm framelines rather than the other way around.

Hope you find these musings of use.

Stephan
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom