Realist Custom help needed...

[Elliott Swanson <elliott@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm posting the following message for John Arrowsmith. Please respond 
directly to him at:

jarrow@xxxxxxx

He's having problems posting to the listserv.  Thanks, Elliott

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Hi all,
        Recently I purchased a Realist Custom from Harry Poster.
The camera takes excellent images but has a problem with the rangefinder.
When the camera first arrived it not only had a "dim" rangefinder image
but also everything was coloured "urine sample" brown. Additionally, the
split image is slightly out when the focus knob is set to infinity and
distant objects viewed ( 300 ft plus ).

        I have taken the camera in for repair to the same guy who repaired
my Kodak stereo. He has not worked on a Realist previously so I sent along
a copy of the Jess Powell "repairman" book on Realist repair in the hope that 
it would give him the edge. He called me yesterday - after 5 hours of trying
to align the rangefinder he is ready for valium. He tells me that if he moves
one lever to adjust the image split overlap everything else changes position
and just gets worse. It does not appear that the relationship between the
film plane backboard and the focus/rangefinder position has been altered,
he would just like to fine tune the image so that at infinity the split
image aligns and horizontally there is min overlap of the images.

        Can anyone tell me just how accurate the Realist rangefinder
actually is? Does the image significantly overlap horizontally and
,at infinity, do the images accurately line up vertically? I would
have thought that a rangefinder would have to be at least reasonably
accurate - otherwise why bother.

        Is there a Realist camera repair manual available anywhere
that may provide more detail than the Jess Powell book? Any help
really really really appreciated.

        John Arrowsmith
        Sydney Australia





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