From Nelson :
Hi, I have a Rollei TLR 2.8F Planar which I inherited from my mom.
The meter seems to be off by 2 to 3 stop. Can someone recommend a
shop that can fix this?
Congratulations. Take care of this camera. Certainly you should have
it checked by a competent technician. I could recommend good addresses
in Europe, but you probably mean a technician in another continent ;-)
Regarding the meter. There might be several reasons why it is offset
by 3 stops.
First you should check some obvious things, at least obvious to
Rolleiphiles here ;-) First, check that the filter correction dial is
on the "zero" setting. This seems trivial, but this dial was intended
to permanently offset the meter when using a contrast colour filter
for black and white pictures. Second, check of course that the
sensitivity for film is set on the proper ISO value. On a 3,5F you
won't find 'ISO' because on the good old says, ASA settings were in
use in the New World and DIN settings in the Old World .-) but in fact
they mean the same thing and are now unified within the ISO value.
Well now that you've checked this, and if the meter is still offset by
substantially more that 1 stop, you should probably have it checked by
a competent technician, the selenium sensitive element has probably
being ageing beyond any recoverable point, an exchange of the sensitive
element might be possible and is the only way to fix this. But there
is also a very complex mechanical transmission between the thumb-wheel
control buttons on the front panel and the needle that moves inside
the am-meter housed inside the focusing knob, so there might be some
mechanical offset as well.
Suppose that everything being set to the standard positions, you
eventually get only one f-stop of offset, consistent throughout the
whole range of brightness values, then you'll just have to modify the
ASA setting and you'll be done. Unfortunately, old selenium cells have
their characteristic curve that ages erratically, and if you can
correct things at one end of the light range, the indications might be
wrong on the other end of the range. Here, this behaviour is often
referred to as 'your selenium cell has become non linear' which to my
opinion is a kind of joke, since the normal behaviour of a light meter
is to deliver values on a logarithmic scale ;-);-)
Well, not kidding, as a summary :
- check that everything that should be set to the standard value
(filter dial, ASA setting) is properly set,
- check that by playing with the ASA setting you can, or cannot, get
consistent readings by comparison with a reliable meter throughout
the whole brightness range.
If everything fails, our readers on this list will immediately propose
a good technician on your continent. In the US it is quite common to
have Rollei TLRs that cross the continent coast-to-coast to be
serviced by renowned technicians ;-)
But be prepared to the fact that the meter is not economically
repairable if you caompare to the price of a good modern hand-held
meter.
Btw, the meter is a Gossen and what is the proper way of using the
meter, with diffuser or not?
Basically you use the meter like any classical meter that has a wide
angle of acceptance, i.e. about the same angle of view as the angle of
view of the standard TLR lens, about 50 to 60 degrees. This is pretty
wide by nowadays standards where regular meters fitted with CdS or
silicon light detectors "see" only about 30 degrees or less. If you
use the meter without diffuser, simply point at the subject. This is
called : reflection light reading. It is another tradition among
Rollei TLR aficionados to point slightly toward the ground to avoid an
excessive amount of light coming from the sky.
With the diffuser, you use the so-called incident light reading. This
is very simple and reliable by bright sunshine, simply point the
camera with diffuser to the sun and read. This is a perfect solution
for subjects with a not-to-wide range of brightnesses and this avoids
some mis-readings due to excessive bright or dark areas surrounding
the subject. At least the method works if you do not care for details
in those bright or dark areas !! usually for colour slides, the plague
is when bright areas are "burned-white" without details. It is
considered acceptable to "burn" the highlights in a colour slide only
if the burned areas are quite small and outside the main subject. On
the contrary, using b&W negatives you usually want to get details in
the shadows. So as you can see there is no simple answer to the proper
use of a meter.
BTW, I have found that the incident light reading is not so easy to
understand by overcast sky or very diffuse ambient light like foggy
days.
I hope you'll allow me a digression here.
The worse case I have found, where, IMHO, the classical selenium meter
fails be it with or without diffuser is a snow landscape by
overcast/grey sky. There is a strange paradox, snow looks and __is__
actually brighter that the overcast winter sky at the horizon. In fact
the overcast sky is much darker at the horizon that at the zenith.
This phenomenon is explained by Prof. Marcel Minanert in his beloved
textbook on "Light and Colour in the Outdoors".
To check this (soon for our readers of the southern hemisphere, but
you've to wait until next winter for the others ;-);-), fit your meter
with or without the incident light diffuser and point either to the
snow/ground or to the zenith, you'll find the same light reading which
is fortunate, snow cannot be brighter that the source of light
illuminating it ;-);-)
I also intend to change the focusing screen, what is the best screen
for this camera.
Your 2,8F is fitted with an interchangeable focusing screen that you
can change yourself without tool. Doing this you have no risk to
change the proper registration, so in principle the position of the
screen does not have to be fine-tuned by a technician. There are
several aftermarket "bright" screens ; personally I like the original
screen and I have only changed it on a used Rolleicord Vb only because
it was exceedingly scratched by unfortunate attempts to clean it by
the previous owner. Original Rollei TLR screens are made of a kind of
plastic which can be scratched easily. Old TLR screens before 1958
were true ground glass but were quite dim.
I got a new screen for my Rolleicord from Photo Suffren in Paris who
has a supply of modern 600x-like modern screens, but cut to the exact
size of classical (1958-1981) rollei TLRs ; newer (post-1987) GX/FX
screens are in fact slightly smaller that the older ones (they are the
same as the SL66 and 600x series), like you have on your 2,8F. This
new screen is identical except for dimensions to the ones that fit the
600x Rollei SLR series. It is definitely much brighter and a pleasure
to use.
To my opinion changing the screen is not an absolute priority. Fixing
the meter is also not the priority since you can use an independent
hand-held meter. The absolute priority to me is on mechanics and
optics. The optics should be perfectly clean, the shutter should work
perfectly.
There is something extremely important that was explained to me by one
of the Parisian Rollei experts, Gérard Métrot (Photo Suffren), and I
am sure everybody here will agree, this has been discussed many times,
i.e. that the front panel that carries the optics should be perfectly
aligned and in perfect registration with respect to the film plane.
Many users of used TLRs blame their optics for un-sharp results before
having the camera checked by a technician for proper mechanical
alignment. When a Rollei TLR is properly aligned, the results you get
are so amazingly sharp for somebody that has only an experience with
small format cameras, that it is unbelievable ;-);-)
So you should make a roll of film, I would recommend a roll of fine
grained colour slides like a Kodak Ektachrome G or Fuji Provia and
you'll immediately see if the results are sharp, the colours correct,
etc... Of course for this you'll have to use a separate meter, but you
can use a 35Mm SLR camera of use the readings.
Good luck and do not hesitate to ask all the questions here !!
--
Emmanuel BIGLER
<bigler@xxxxxxxx>
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