Came back from Dan Daniel yesterday. Viewfinder’s clear, the shutter speeds are accurate and they work great, rangefinder’s easy to focus and the focus is smooth. The only issue is a design flaw. The plate at the bottom of the actuator arm can slip under the shutter release lever when the camera is folded. It’s simple matter of pushing it back in place but I’m getting in the habit of checking it. I should have some posts by the weekend.
madNbad wrote:
Came back from Dan Daniel yesterday. Viewfinder’s clear, the shutter speeds are accurate and they work great, rangefinder’s easy to focus and the focus is smooth. The only issue is a design flaw. The plate at the bottom of the actuator arm can slip under the shutter release lever when the camera is folded. It’s simple matter of pushing it back in place but I’m getting in the habit of checking it. I should have some posts by the weekend.
Awesome.
Nice to know the camera has been CLA'd. How much Dan charged for it ?
The only thing I don't get used to is to load film properly thru that little tiny window.
Total was $175 with shipping. He was in the middle of moving when I shipped him the camera but his communication is great as well as the work. The camera originally had a red gel in the rangefinder path to increase contrast. Dan took out the old, dirty one and tried a couple of different colors before deciding the rangefinder patch had enough contrast and the extra light helped with focusing.
The camera feeds from right to left and the viewfinder is on the right. Pretty much opposite of most rangefinder cameras. It has auto-indexing and a loaded film indicator. The red dot for the film indicator can be tripped without firing the shutter. It also makes it's own little click noise which is a different sound of the shutter. The shutter release is threaded for a cable release. The shutter needs to be cocked manually before making an exposure.
Like all folders of that era, you have to ensure the focus is set to infinity before closing the camera.
It was fun to use before service, just not very reliable. Now that everything works as it should, it'll be even better.
