oftheherd said:
Abbazz - I have a (luckily cheapy purchased) copy of the Zuiko lens variety, that is appently incomplete. The film plane is capable of moving in and out, but actually only moves out with the cams that are moved by the focus wheel. It was not attached to anything that would move it back. Were there springs to allow it to come back or what?
I haven't seen the Mamiya 6 Automat mentioned in the later post (although I'd love to get a look at one, or even buy one at a reasonable price) but I can tell you that the older Mamiya 6 has a somewhat different focusing mechanism than that described.
The film plane is moved outward by cams just as you describe. The film plane is supposed to be held tightly against these cams by pressure of a simple spring (maybe two springs, I can't remember for sure) which is what draws the film plane back inward as you focus toward infinity. It sounds as if the springs have escaped from your camera, probably during some past amateur repair. Unfortunately, I have no idea what you could do about it aside from finding another earlier 6 to use as a parts source.
Meanwhile, I'll confirm from experience that the pre-Automat 6 is a terrific camera that gives excellent results. You do have to use the red window to line up the first frame, but after that it has auto film stop while advancing. The shutter must be cocked manually, but this does eliminate the potentially fragile mechanism that has to run from the body to the front of the lens on the Automat type.
Speaking of fragile mechanisms, the big advantage of the 6's film plane focusing is that it eliminates the complex and delicate mechanism needed to couple the lens to the rangefinder on most folding RFs. That mechanism not only needs to reach a long distance and move very precisely, it also has to hinge out of the way when the camera is folded. (The alternative is an optically coupled system like that on the Zeiss Super Ikonta B, but that limits the camera to front-element focusing, which isn't as good optically as unit focusing in which the entire lens moves.) Mamiya neatly sidestepped the whole problem by moving the focusing system back into the camera body, where the rangefinder already resides, thus allowing them to be joined by a direct, simple coupling system that doesn't need to fold. Good thinking!
PS -- The Zuiko lenses on most of the older 6es are quite good, and the manually cocked Seikosha shutter is super-reliable. The 6 I used to own had a strange, funky external flash sync mechanism built into a little housing above the lens, but I suppose later ones had internal sync.
