67 repairs

i live in oxford, also go to london most weeks. have just got a 67 from ebay which seems fine but would like to give it a bit of a loving once over.can you recommend someone? many thanks.jim.

Jimmy, I can't specifically recommend anyone but I would say dont entrust it to Pentax UK.

Ken

thanks ken.

In fairness to Pentax UK, most problems seem to revolve around the issue of parts. They keep only a very limited stock in the UK, and a not much more extensive stock in Germany.

This means that often the UK orders from Germany, Germany orders from Japan, Japan orders from Vietnam, and eventually the part required is sent by camel along the silk route to Istanbul, whence a jannisary is entrusted with taking it to London (via Mannheim, of course).

George

Very good George, this now explains the why my 645 was damaged twice in transit. I thought it was just pathetically bad packing but now I can see that the damage and the 6 month wait was because it went from England to Scotland by camel on the route you describe!

I can almost smile about it now

Ken

I think I saw the camel when I was on holiday and looked over the water towards Jura....

And would a few drams of Isle of Jura encouraged this?


Ken

can i buy everyone a whiskey? i'll be in the bar in five minutes

Ye're nae a Scoot, Jimmy lad, or ye'd aspelt it "whisky".

But, aye, it's the thocht that coonts.

Guid licht!

And guid liquor.

G

A very good place I have found that does all medium format repairs is in Farringdon, near Kings Cross. His name is Graham Playford and has a small workshop below a guy that works on flash units.

To give you an example, to fit a Beattie screen to my 6x7 Pentax UK wanted £140+Vat and he did it for £20+Vat which included checking and adjusting the metering and even replaced the TTL rubber seal for free!

In case you are interested his number is 02083494568

brilliant thank you

actually i have one more question for anyone out there; i have inherited the three extension rings for the 67; is there a steadfast rule for the number of stops to stop down for 1,2,all3 etc.....hope the question makes sense

i shall try farringdon!

Do you not have a ttl head on your 6x7? If you do then I would just go by the meter in the camera.

In case you dont I would assume you would need to apply bellows extention factor that applies to large format....the principle is the same.

From what I remember it is something like (V/F)2

V = is the distance between lens and film. I would assume back of lens in medium format considering their size compared to a large format lens.

F = Focal Length of lens ie 105mm standard lens

eg. if lens is 210mm away from film (unlikely unless you have loads of rings!) and you are using a 105mm standard then its 210/105 = 2 then square this = 4

Therefore 4x more light is needed ie 2 stops!!

Yup, we use (b/f)sq'd

B = Bellows
F = Focal Length

And just in case you don't know, when focussing for macro, don't use the standard hyperfocal focussing, apparently you need to focus half way not a third into the subject. I have no reason for this, but it works on 4x5 film. We were taught this semester in studio table top photography (not macro but close to 1:1).

I'll have to investigate this.

EDIT

I don't think the (b/f)sq'd formula will work for a P67. It doesn't work on 35mm as far as I know, because 35mm lenses are complex in design: they have elements which refract the light at various angles to reduce the overall length of the lens.

The same would go for the P67 lenses (& 645 etc etc). When dealing with 4x5 cameras the lenses are far less complex (usually 3 or so elements) and a 1000mm lens has to be used at around 1000mm.

Hope this all makes sense, I'm not too good at explaining things (I'm a pictures person go figure).

I know this sounds ludicrously simplistic but...

take a reading using the cameras meter from a gray card without any tubes attached, then take reading with tubes attached and note difference then work out the exposure increase

Of course metering throught the TTL would be easiest however if you have the earliest extention tubes the ttl doesnt work for some reason, think the older ones do not tell the ttl what aperture the lens its on.

The hyperfocal focusing is because focus increases the further away you go. Therefore if you focus half way you will tend to loose focus far more infront of the focus point compared to after the point. The golden rule is to aim about 1/3rd into the scene.... and that goes with everthing where there focus is critical over the entire scene.