Graflex.org

[trekkin]

My new Graflex XL focuses at infinity at 5 ft, according to the scale on the helical housing. If you keep turning it to the actual infinity mark, the image on ground glass placed on the rails goes way out of focus.

Is there a way to move infinity focus up to it's proper place?

(I understand how to adjust the rangefinder, that's no problem).

Thanks for any help.

[1banjo]

to start with you may need to see if your lens & barrel mach
in side the barrel is a cam on it there should be a number
80 for am 80mm lens
95 for my 95mm rodenstock-ysarex
180 for my 180mm rodenstock-rotelar
and so on if they mach then you may then need to repair the rangerfinder

banjo

[trekkin]

Thanks for the suggestions. Yes the numbers match. This is a pretty pristine XL (very nice plastic tabs).

I just worked with it a while and discovered the answer to my question:

Putting a pane of ground glass on the rails on the back of the camera is NOT an accurate way to check focus because the film plane sits in the film holder some distance in back of the camera rails (so this camera is quite unlike the TLR's and folders that I'm used to working with, where the rails are equal to the film plane).

You have to attach a roll film holder (or one of the other means of holding negatives), open it up, pull the slide, and then put your ground glass on the rails within the roll film holder. Then the camera focuses on infinity at the proper place on the helical mount.

After measuring shutter speeds (slow no doubt) I will try my first roll of 120 film in this beast. I really like this camera so far, although I tend to like strange things that most people don't like. We'll see how the Zeiss Planar does soon.

Thanks again for you time, maybe my discovery will help somebody else someday.

[trekkin]

Just as an update, I went down to the waterfront and ran a roll of HP5 through my xl and the photos are lovely. Contrasty and perfectly in focus (offhand, based on rangefinder). The only funny thing I noticed was that the resulting prints with the 80mm Planar seem to cover a bit larger area than I remember framing in the viewfinder. But if anything that's actually an advantage. The 80 has a nice wide-angle field of view.

This camera is fun to use, easy to carry around, and has an excellent lens. I have a lot of medium format cameras, but this is sure to be one of my favs.

As with all Graflex, the xl gets a lot of attention in public. When people ask me about it I say that this model was issued to US war correspondents in Viet Nam during the 60's and early 70's.