Speed Graphic I'd Like to Shoot Hand Held. Lens Question

[skytrooper]

Hi everyone,
I have an old Speed Graphic that i picked up some time ago and I haven't really done much with it. I'd like to use it hand held for shots and I have two lenses in my bag. One is a wide angle Optar 90mm f6.8 and a Kodak Ektar 203mm f7.7. The reason I ask is i will need to figure out how to adjust my infinity stops and my kalart rangefinder to that lens so I want to set things up for the best of the two lenses.
Thanks
Sky

[mdarnton]

Set up a pair of infinity stops for the long lens, and calibrate the RF for that lens. Do the stops based on where the rangefinder currently reaches infinity. Next, make a focusing scale for that lens, on the left side of the bed. Then get a second set of infinity stops, set them so infinity for the 90 is when the other lens scale is set to infinity. Make a new focusing scale for the second lens on the right side of the bed, starting from there.

When you use the camera, use the RF for the long lens, or for the 90 use the RF and then transfer the distance from the left scale to the right scale. You want to go in that direction because the shorter lens has more depth of field, and thus can tolerate mis-focus a bit better.

To make a focus scale, put a strip of adhesive label down the outside track, and a small piece with a pointer on the moving track, then focus the lens manually on the ground glass, at various distances, marking the distance opposite the pointer on the outside sticker. Same for the second scale, and try to use the same foot distances as much as you can, to make transferring data from one scale to the other easier.

In a pinch, at smaller openings, you could just use the scale for the shorter lens, once you have it made, without the RF. That's basically what I do, and I'm trying to teach myself to recognize distances. It's going pretty well.

Information for calibrating the RF is on the web somewhere... It's not incredibly difficult with a tape measure, set of small screwdrivers and an hour of time.

Here it is.. https://www.graflex.org/speed-graphic/kalart-adjustment.html