Plaubel Roll-Op: Some Photos

With the Roll-Op in working order I couldn't wait to run a roll through to see how it performs, and I'm incredibly happy with the results. Please enjoy these 4 frames.

I'm extremely excited to create more photos with this camera.

1936 Plaubel Roll-Op Part 2

 I managed to find another day to myself and the last piece for the Roll-Op arrived so now it's finally ready for use. I thought it was going to be ready much earlier until I found out someone had replaced the chain in the rangefinder section with one that was too short meaning it couldn't be adjusted to infinity and it didn't open and close smoothly. Let's dig in!

So, here's the camera with the lens off and a diagram of where the chain would normally go, the toothpick is there to keep the bottom lever in place.:

The spring on the right hand side of the picture is pulling the lever at the bottom up. As the silver section rotates counter-clockwise that lever gets pulled up and the rangefinder adjusts for the chosen focus. We'll go into how the rangefinder works in a bit. Here's a photo of the focus lever and scale:

Here's the new chain in place, it's very fine, 0.5mm in diameter. I had the end of the chain dangling out of the where it screws into for fine adjustment, I'd loose the screw a little, adjust, test the opening and closing action then repeat until everything only just cleared.

I had to do this twice, as the first time I tried to be lazy and just screw the chain down as shown. This just snapped it and it came rocketing out the tiny hole so I did it again and properly. Now, I can not stress how useful toothpicks are to have at all times, I stuck one in this screen hole so I could coil the chain around it and keep it clear.

Now on to the rangefinder. This is an early rangefinder that works by converging the top and bottom of an image together, something like in this photo:

You can see through the sign here that the top and bottom of the pole don't converge. As you change focus they will converge and when they do you can say that that distance is in focus. This works the same way as your eyes do. If you hold a finger directly in front of your right eye it's looking straight ahead while your left eye needs to look towards the right. As you move your finger further away your left eye has to adjust to a shallower and shallower angle to keep that in focus. Here's what that looks like with mirrors in the rangefinder

As I move that silver lever the right hand mirror gets moved forwards and backwards, moving the reflected image from the mirror on the left. Here's a look at the front of the camera and the 2 windows used in the rangefinder

Here's the path the light takes to your eye. The blue path is the top image. It comes over the top of the mirror and into your eye directly. The red path is the bottom image, it comes through the front of the camera, reflects off the mirrors and then enters your eye.

And here's what it looks like through the rangefinder, as you can see the top and bottom image line up so that power pole is in focus.

Now we can get on to adjustment. To adjust the rangefinder we focus the camera to infinity, point it at a sufficiently distant object and turn some screws until we converge the object at infinity. This screw here adjusts the horizontal angle at which the mirror is held, brining the object into and out of convergence.

And this screw here adjusts the vertical angle of the mirror, moving the image up or down in the plane so you can make sure it all lines up vertically as well.

With everything in line and in focus I put a little bit of thread locker on the screws so they don't move, now I want to check that the rangefinder is correct and that the lens is in focus as well. In order to check focus I have this bit of ground glass, which is frosted on one side.

This gives the lens something to throw an image on to, so with a bit of blu-tac we can see what would be projected on the film plane with ease.

With this in place I got out a loupe and adjusted the position of the front element of the lens to bring that distant power pole into sharp focus:

Then I bought the camera inside, focused on a close object and measure the distance to the film plane. If the rangefinder, focus scale and image all align in focus then my jobs done, and luckily nothing needed adjusting. I chose the handles on my closet for this as they're very easy to focus on and have strong vertical lines for the rangefinder.

Lastly the film chamber was pretty beat up, and internal reflections are no good for photography, so these needed a touch up with a bit of enamel paint.

I also did some cosmetic repainting off camera to touch up some numbers and grooves. This is the frame counter and it was pretty beat up, looks great now!

All done! The last thing to do it to shoot a roll of film and see that it's all light tight. I'm out of 120 film at the moment but I've got 20 rolls coming next week so up next will be some photos from this camera. Both of these cameras take the same film, the Plaubel is from 1936 while the Fuji was made up until 2001.

Making a small bellows for a Voightlander Perkeo I

One from the archives, I fixed a Voightlander Perkeo I for fun, and part of that fun had to involve constructing a new bellows. I followed this tutorial and bought a template off of him and would recommend it. It's slow work but nothing too taxing.

Step 1: Tape down your template onto your card stock.

Step 2: Remove the cat from the work piece

Step 3: Extend the green lines out into the card stock, then with a ballpoint pen apply heavy pressure and score each and every black line.

Step 4: Flip the work over and put a dot at each intersection with a pencil

Step 5: Score all of those lines with a pen

Step 6: Remove the template and draw some more lines like this, these will be tabs for aligning the bellows when gluing

Step 7: Cut it out leaving the tabs there and glue it together, making sure it all matches up nicely

Step 8: Fold slowly

Step 9: Keep on folding

Here it is months later, after a paint and install. It's held up very well and is now soft and supple, shows no signs of developing holes but we'll see, the material was experimental

1936 Plaubel Roll-Op Service

I set aside a day to get this Plaubel Roll-Op serviced. I'd never worked on a shutter this old before (1936 Compur Rapid) and of course, every manufacturer of the Compur Rapid did it a bit differently, different components and gear trains and so forth. Chris Sherlocks video on servicing compur-rapids was invaluable. Anyway, here's some photos from the experience.

Setting up

After figuring out how to remove the shutter from the body.

Getting the nameplate and the shutter speed cam out of the way

A look at some very oily shutter blades

10 even oilier aperture blades, it only took 5 attempts at setting the blades to get it right. Pain in the dick.

After cleaning and reassembly

State of the rear element before a clean with ammonia and peroxide

After cleaning, there's a little etching but you gotta get it in just the right light to see it. I don't see it effecting the final image

I also needed to replace a mirror in the rangefinder section, this is the old mirror

And this is the new mirror in place, had to cut it myself and it was the first time I'd ever done any glass cutting.

All done!

Now, how does it work?

What you're looking at here is the shutter with the cam plate on it. The shutter is currently in T mode (this opens the shutter on one release, and closes it on the next, T for Time), you rotate the plate to select speeds so in this case, as we rotate counter-clockwise we're adjusting the speed from 1 second to 1/400th of a second.

What sets the speed is the blue component. This is the retard gear train follower, as that follower lowers, the shutter speed gets longer, it's currently in a fully disengaged position for T and B modes, it's all the way up as the shutter is not cocked.

The red component is what engages that gear train, it'll ride that steep slope upwards and allow the gear train follower to drop into that valley, selecting the shutter speed

The orange component is the cocking lever, there's a big spring attached to it that supplies the energy to fire the mechanism, this spring pulls a ratchet against the retard gear train to, you guessed it, retard the motion of that gear train and slow it down. The gear train has to travel through it's entire range of motion before the shutter will close again. By limiting the range of motion you can set shutter speeds.

The purple component is the high speed spring. Getting speeds up to 1/400th of a second is difficult, their solution, add a big ol spring that only engages for that speed, adding energy to the system to snap the shutter through as quickly as possible.

The green is the shutter release lever. You can see the lever it's engaging. When you move that lever out of the way the cocking lever can release its energy. Through its range of motion it will open the shutter blades, keep them open until the time elapses, then snap them shut.

The only other major component in that mechanism is a self-timer. It'll delay firing for 10 seconds so you can set up a shot then run out and get in the photo. It's hidden under the plate. All the other components are springs and catches to makes sure things stay in the right place, get caught at the right time and release only when intended. Under all of this is the aperture which is some interleaved blades that let you choose your depth of field and how much light you'll let through.