Posted by Nick Rowan on January 17, 2001 at 15:01:35:
I have two Crown Graphics from the early 1960's that
both have original top-mounted plastic rangefinders. I
am interested in taking some black-and-white half-
figure portraits hand-held, using these 2 cameras with
either a 135mm or 150mm lens at about 5 feet away from
the subject--and making 25x mural-size enlargments from
the 4 x 5 negatives.
The pictures have to absolutely needle sharp, or I do
not want to use the rangefinder.
Provided the lenses are cammed and set properly on the
rails, how accurate in fact are the rangefinders on
these cameras? Will they yield needle sharp pictures?
Would I do any better by putting the camera on a tripod
and focusing on the ground glass instead? Aside from
the stability and fixed position that a tripod would
provide, IS GROUND GLASS FOCUSING NECESSARILY MORE
ACCURATE THAN RANGEFINDER FOCUSING? What I mean to say
really is: can the human eye focus more finely with a
LUPE on the groundglass than looking unaided through a
rangefinder trying to match up the blades of focus
though the rangefinder, "unmagnified"? Or is it
possible to see those focusing blades inside the circle
in the center of the rangefinder and achieve optimal
results?
What are your experiences and recommendations with the
Crown's rangefinder? I would be interested especially
in hearing from people who have had extensive
experience with top-mounted rangefinder-focusing on the
Crown or similar model of this era.
Thank you.