My ancient Model A ciro-flex often develops a small light leak which shows up in the lower left corner of a print. This exhibits itself as two narrow white bands which run about a quarter of the way across the print.

What, (if anything) can be done to eliminate this problem.

On the Ciro-Flex cameras I have, the light seal is just felt. It seems to me that it could be replaced with new felt, by peeling off the old stuff and gluing on some new.

No, I haven't done this myself yet. But I have some evidence of possible light leaks as well (along the edges of the film).

Thanks Doug, I'll consider your suggestion. However the fuzzies along the inner edge of my old ciro don't look all that bad. I wonder if it is the hinge opening or film advance axle opening where the light come through. Strange thing; the leaks are not consistant from exposure to exposure, that is, they are not in all of the shots taken. But they are always in the very same place.

This is something that I love about a square medium format. I have been framing my compositions in such a way as to be able to crop out the leaks after a flatbed scanning.

Andre,

I Googled around and found:
http://www.largeformatphotography.info/leaks.html

Seems like good info, or at least a place to start looking.

Doug
doug@douggrosjean.com

Pull that old, dried out, fuzzy stuff out and replace it with some new light seal felt or yarn.

_________________
While a picture may be worth a thousand words, a quality photograph is worth a million.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: 45PSS on 2005-03-04 21:58 ]</font>

OK, I have determined that the old packing needs to be pulled out and replaced. Now what kind of felt do I need and how do I replace it. None of the "professional" photo dealers/labs in downtown DC know what I'm talking about. "Felt? What's that?"

Is this an item that needs to be mail-ordered and if so from where?

You can try different things -- I've seen Russian cameras with light baffling that seems to be cotton string dipped in India ink or black paint -- but you might want to look at the Micro Tools website. They have a lot of neat stuff, including light baffle kits:

http://www.micro-tools.com

And thick black yarn would be in keeping with Graflex manifacture, sheet felt for lamp bottoms and general funiture use will work also, got a good hardware store around?

If you can find gaffer tape, cut it into narrow strips to fit the light trap channels, using a metal straight edge and single-edge razor blade or Xacto knife on a pane of glass. Gaffer tape is a bit like duct tape, but much better: sturdier material and adhesive, and it's black. I have successfully treated 35mm cameras and Graphic roll holders by this method. It's a little tricky getting the tape strips into the channels, because the adhesive wants to grab everything in sight, but with practice come results. You can build up the tape in layers if necessary, and it's all easily removed.

I happened to have all those materials already on hand. If I had to go looking for all this stuff from stratch, I'd probably go instead with black yarn and white glue like Sanford's or Elmer's.