Early Tachihara help needed

[awldune]

I definitely noticed the thick board! I have some 3/8'' board I will play around with. Very loose fit when I use my usual 1/8'' chipboard.

Don't think I need any photos, although I was wondering, does your camera have any "stop" mechanism to prevent the bed from being focused too far out or back? Mine doesn't have anything and the gears try to eat into the wood if you rack it out too far.

Oren grad, that is interesting about these cameras overlapping the "Model II." I guess I will never know the age of this camera since there's no serial.

[Fotoguy20d]

No stop on mine either - it's a bit of a sickening feeling when the gears start chewing into the wood.

Dan

[awldune]

Actually I thought of a couple of other questions:

It seems like the front standard is tilted slightly forward when tightened at the detent position. Is this normal? I can't think of what would go wrong to change this, unless they just machined the detent in the wrong place.

Also, the front rise/fall does not seem to have a zero detent. However, it looks like the bottom of the "biscuits" at the top corners of the front standard lines up with the top of the metal posts at roughly the zero position. Does that sound right?

[Oren Grad]

It seems like the front standard is tilted slightly forward when tightened at the detent position. Is this normal? I can't think of what would go wrong to change this, unless they just machined the detent in the wrong place.

Mine's just the opposite - it looks as though it has an ever so slight backward tilt. I don't worry about it. I'd choose a different camera if I had an application where the utmost in precision and accuracy were required.

Also, the front rise/fall does not seem to have a zero detent. However, it looks like the bottom of the "biscuits" at the top corners of the front standard lines up with the top of the metal posts at roughly the zero position. Does that sound right?

Mine doesn't have an alignment mark either, and I don't miss it. (I actually prefer not to have a zero detent, because that makes it harder to make small adjustments around the neutral point.) I just eyeball rough alignment of standard against back when I'm setting up the camera, and I don't worry about whether I have an exact zero point. I'll almost always tweak the rise/fall anyway once I'm viewing the ground glass, to get the composition I want. I've never taken a picture where having the theoretically exact zero alignment mattered. Again, if I were doing some sort of scientific documentation where everything had to be precisely and accurately characterized, I'd use a different camera.

[awldune]

Thanks Oren.

I expect I will be using my 90mm at f/22 and up most of the time, so precision shouldn't be too big a deal.

[Heroique]

I expect I will be using my 90mm at f/22 and up most of the time, so precision shouldn't be too big a deal.

Sounds like your shooting habits wouldn’t make alignment critical, but indeed, it is nice to know whether one’s front and back standards are parallel when they’re in the neutral position. I recall confirming this on my Tachi by mounting it on my Ries tripod, then pointing the camera straight down. I used a small level to compare the two standards – front to back, side to side. The standards were sufficiently parallel, but rarely do my landscape shots require perfect alignment. But it’s nice to know.

[goodfood]

If you want neutral position, open the camera, loose the lens rise or fall nut. push the bellow to closest position and tight the nut. This is the neutral position. Hope can help.

[awldune]

If you want neutral position, open the camera, loose the lens rise or fall nut. push the bellow to closest position and tight the nut. This is the neutral position. Hope can help.

This does not appear to work for my camera, the standard is lower than the neutral position when I do that.

I have found that obtaining a neutral position is not really important with regard to rise-fall, however.

Thanks for your input though