u/TankArchives

It's the time of the year again where we teach new recruits to stand in a straight line, a more complicated task than it sounds!

Shot on a period Leica IIIa, Leitz Summar f/2 50 mm lens, expired store brand colour film

I got an absolutely pristine Aldis-Butcher Anastigmat f/4.5 5.5" lens that I want to mount on my 3x4 Speed Graphic. The lens board is easy enough to make but I also want the rangefinder to couple with it. You would think that a ~14 cm lens wouldn't take a big adjustment compared to the stock 13.5 cm lens, but I'm having a hell of a time finding settings on the long and short scales that work. If I calibrate it at 15 feet it will be off at infinity, if I calibrate it at infinity it will be off at 15 feet. What am I doing wrong? Is there something I need to change other than the long/short scales?

I ran into a Reflex Korelle at an estate auction for a relatively acceptable price. The name rang a bell and so I looked it up, indeed this camera is mentioned in a number of articles telling you to stay far away from it. How bad could it be, I thought, and a brief bidding war later the Reflex Korelle was mine. This was a late version with a bayonet mounting. Problem #1: the bayonet mounting is quite rare and lenses for it are few and expensive. Sure, not a big deal, aside from that the camera looked fine. I got the dust and haze off the lens pretty easily, all the mechanisms seemed to work, but the curtain sync was off. Seems easy, I've done this a million times before, take the top plate off and tune the curtain tension. No problem.

This is where it all went wrong. The Reflex Korelle, as many sources will tell you, uses a steel wire to cock the shutter. It runs across the top plate, turns the shutter knob to cock it, and then returns using a clockwork spring. Unfortunately when I unscrewed the three screws around the shutter knob the spring went *sproing* and broke in half, taking a chunk of the flimsy brass cup that it sits in. If you're going to follow in my footsteps, do NOT undo those three screws. The only screws you need to take off the top plate are under the leatherette and one more underneath the film winding knob.

I tried several substitute springs with no avail. This is a pretty thick strong spring, a watch spring spring will be too weak to return the steel cable and a clock spring is too big. Oh and also I broke the steel cable at some point while fiddling with it, but that was easily replaced using a braided steel cable from AliExpress that I had lying around for scale model tanks.

The good news is that the frame advance mechanism doesn't actually need the spring to work. You can also cock the shutter by turning the shutter speed knob, but since it turns the mechanism using a relatively fragile brass rod, I thought I could quickly 3D print something with similar dimensions to the original mechanism. That turned out to be a big mistake, since a more serious lever will apply too much force and tear the curtain ribbons. Rather than thicker fabric used on something like a Leica or an Exakta, the ribbon fabric is the same thickness as the curtain fabric and it fails easily. After having gone through a few Korelles on eBay looking for a cheap one that I could scrap for parts, I think most of them are actually broken because of this rather than because the steel cable gave out. The cable is actually relatively easy to replace but it's a bit annoying to fully release the curtain rollers. You can actually access them partially by removing the frame with the rollers which needs only 4 screws. Adjusting the curtain tension is also not that hard if you can get the top off without breaking anything else. It's your standard screw held together with a spring, unfortunately there is no way to hold the screw in place once you got the tension right but I found that using tweezers and then shifting the spring into place with a screwdriver is good enough.

Anyway, a seller accepted my lowball offer and a brand new Reflex Korelle was on its way. I noticed that it had the much more common screw mount, the superior f/2.8 80 mm Tessar, and also a case. The case was in bad condition but at least most of the leather was intact. This Korelle was also "as is" but it seemed that the only problem with this one was that the self timer was engaged. Flipping it off dropped the mirror and the camera was ready to go. This time I went the path of least resistance. The shutter ran slowly, but taking off the frame with the rollers and squirting a little lighter fluid in the corners made it run like clockwork. Turns out my "parts only" camera worked fine and made the camera I aimed to fix no longer necessary.

Having actually gone out and used it, I can say that the experience was worth the hassle. This was truly a premium item. It's lighter than my Super Ikonta 533/16, uses the same lens, but a screw mount means it's trivial to 3D print an adapted to mount some absolutely wild stuff on it like I did with my VP Exakta. Speaking of Exaktas, the lever wind on the Korelle is very different from what I got used to on those. You need to complete a full rotation to cock the shutter, return the lever to its home position, and then keep winding to reach the next frame. My version of the Korelle locks automatically at that point, but earlier ones don't. It's actually possible to advance to the next frame without cocking the shutter fully, in which case there will be no way to actually shoot (unless you turn the shutter knob).

The actual mirror mechanism is also unconventional. The shutter will fire when the mirror hits the top of the mirror box, but there is a long spongy trigger pull before the break, rather than the sharp spring loaded mirror on the Exakta. On the other hand, the mirror does come back without having to cock the shutter. The slow speed mechanism works similarly to the one on the Exakta. You set the shutter to B and turn an auxiliary speed mechanism to select a speed between 2 seconds and 1/10 seconds. Unlike on the Exakta, the self timer is a separate mechanism rather than a part of the slow speed mechanism, so the whole setup is a lot simpler and less trouble prone.

Overall, I don't regret going down this road. I like weird cameras where the designers were just trying to figure out what a certain form factor was supposed to look like. I would have liked to have an Exakta 66 to complete my pre-war Exakta collection, but those cost about 10x as much as a Reflex Korelle. The first 6x6 SLR, the Noviflex, appears to be rare as hen's teeth. If you want a pre-WW2 6x6 SLR this is your only realistic option and it's not a bad one. I'm going to order a modern focusing screen for mine and maybe with time it will displace my Super Ikonta 533/16 and my Rolleicord as my 6x6 camera of choice.

I bought a box from an estate auction that contained (among other goodies) three mysterious lenses. All three appear to have been adapted to the M39 mount. The box came with a Contax to M39 adapter with a tripod clamp that screws into said adapter. All three lenses focus at infinity when attached to a Contax using the adapter, so I have no doubt that all three were adapted specifically for a Contax.

The first is a Popular f/6 12" telephoto. This one seems pretty straightforward. There is a massive focusing helicoid attached to the back of the lens but the only position marked on it is infinity. There is no rangefinder sync, so I'm not sure how this lens would actually have been used with a Contax.

The second is a Taylor, Taylor, and Hobson Series III f/6.5 3.15" lens. This one has a functional focusing mount and distance scale, so I suppose you could use it with an accessory rangefinder. The aperture ring doesn't turn and I can't see an aperture mechanism in the first place, so perhaps I don't have a complete lens here.

The third is a Taylor-Hobson f/4.5 5" lens. This one has no focusing helicoid, so it's fixed at infinity. That long tube in the back isn't an extension tube, the rear lens element is in the end of it, so someone must have made it this way on purpose.

Why was this setup made? Is it actually worth using like this? The flange distance is juuuust enough to put it on my Exakta, but I assume no Exakta to M39 adapter exists.

As campaign season nears we need to remember how to do the most important part of army life: marching up and down the square. This also gives me an opportunity to test out my "new" Kine Exakta and "new" Ektachrome film that expired in the 1980s.