Monorail Standard Alignment

[John Conway]

I'm not an absolute perfectionist , but when things look out of alignment to me , it bugs me. My Cambo Master PC monorail has little measurement gauges everywhere they need to be so both standards can be set at exact positions or back to zero . But with my camera , when everything is at zero position , things look a little off to me . Then , after a tweak here and a tweak there , it all looks right to me. So , my question is , how important is exact , precise alignment of the two standards? I have a good eye . Sometimes when I argue with my wife about a picture or something else around the house being uneven I'll grab the level and I'm always right.

[mdarnton]

My Cambo SC is within about a mm on each corner of the lens board. That's close enough for me. Don't use your eye--rack the front and back apart exactly the length of a pencil and then check all the corners against each other that way.

[Tin Can]

LOL, I argue with levels, I often think they are wrong. My Nikon digicam level is so course, it's worthless.

I often wonder why we have such accurate visual sense of level, better to kill the Wooly Mammoth with spear?

[jcoldslabs]

Every time I eyeball something my level always tells me I'm wrong. As a result, I no longer trust my eyeballs.

Jonathan

[John Conway]

The levels are missing from my camera. I was going to order them. Maybe I'll just leave them off!

[gregmo]

The levels are missing from my camera. I was going to order them. Maybe I'll just leave them off!

Don't bother replacing the missing levels. If you try & rely on multiple levels, you will drive yourself crazy. Just use 1 level to measure the various places around the camera. That way it's at least standardized.

[AtlantaTerry]

I once stupidly dropped my Cambo monorail so for sure it is out of whack. That was 8 years ago, I just keep shooting.

[mdarnton]

The normal Cambo model is kind of fragile. My first one, 25 years ago or so, sustained a warping injury packed in a trunk for a European trip, but I was able to bend it back because the base for the upright poles is a relatively thin and weak casting. Recently I tried to buy an SCX--one of the beefy ones--and it arrived bent (poorly packed) and I couldn't bend it back with reasonable effort, so I sent it back.

[Jim Jones]

Levels and scales aren't nearly as important as sharp images. A good ground glass with an unobtrusive grid makes levels and scales nearly redundant.

[John Conway]

Levels and scales aren't nearly as important as sharp images. A good ground glass with an unobtrusive grid makes levels and scales nearly redundant.

I guess that is really what it gets down to. What is on the ground glass is what you get.