View Full Version : Need help with the first complex lens board I've ever seen
I bought an uncoated Zeiss 150mm Tessar in a Compur shutter. The glass is lovely, and the shutter works, but I can't figure out how to get it off of the lens board it's installed on.
I'm hoping someone here has seen one of these before. I haven't.
(Poor quality macro pictures below.)
Behind the shutter speed dial (12 o'clock) , there's a moving lever that engages a thin pin on the back of the shutter, to keep it from turning. This is normal for lenses of this age, and not a problem.
The problem is that at about 4:30 and 10:30 (looking at the shutter from the front) are heavy pins that are attached to the board. These pins are gripped by levers that do not move, even with heavy pressure, and also keep the shutter from turning. It's not possible to see what the inner end of these levers is attached to. (What I'm trying to do, of course, is unscrew the shutter from its retaining ring.)
I pushed on these with the tip of a screwdriver, hard, both to the left and inward. They don't move at all.
Releasing the normal pin-release lever and trying to turn the shutter on the board (to unscrew it from the retaining ring) doesn't work at all. Nothing budges even a little.
The thin black board is attached to the main gray board with 4 screws. The heads are behind the shutter and can't be reached.
Have you seen this before?
How do I get the lens off the board???
Second picture is the normal lens-release lever. Third and fourth pictures are the two mystery pins.
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Keith Pitman
7-Oct-2019, 16:07
What does the back of the lensboard look like?
Forgot to say: There is a 3rd, thin board fastened to the back of the gray board. This one fits loosely around the back of the lens and would prevent access to the retaining ring, if there was one.
But I can see through the gap enough to tell that there is no retaining ring.
Keith,
There is a 3rd, thin round board on the back of the main board. The ends (not the heads) of 4 small screws protrude slightly.
Otherwise, it's as I described in the "Forgot to say" post.
The retaining ring has to come off first, then lens should lift off board...
Ring needs proper spanner, or lens can be damaged when makeshift tool slips... Ring might be stuck due to corrosion or threadlok applied to threads... A few drops of acetone applied only to thread seam, and repeat should get the ring turning with a spanner...
Steve K
The retaining ring has to come off first, then lens should lift off board...
Steve K
I can see the shutter's threads on the back of the lens board. There isn't any retaining ring.
I'm wondering if the shutter is glued into the board.
I'd be willing to use a thin hacksaw and cut the two strange pins (doing my best to keep filings out of the shutter), but I'm hoping to hear from someone who knows exactly what this is, and how to unlock it.
(I guess another solution would be to buy a camera that uses 114mm boards.)
reddesert
7-Oct-2019, 20:16
You say you want to unscrew the lens from the retaining ring, but you also said that from the back, you can see there is no retaining ring. What is the lens screwed into, if anything? A picture of the back would help.
The large grey lensboard does not look contemporary with the lens or the small lensboard. It looks much newer, like it belongs to a postwar monorail. What is it like on the back? It looks to me like the small black board was mounted to the gray board by sandwiching it to the thing on the back, with the screws whose ends you can see. (If all else fails you can probably drill out those screw ends.)
Did you push on the two levers, or on the mystery pins? It almost looks like the pins are intended to be pushed down, pulled up, or slid sideways to free the levers.
reddesert
7-Oct-2019, 21:19
Based on your measurement of 114mm and the picture, the gray board could be a Rittreck lensboard. I've never had one, but it looks similar to pictures, such as those in https://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?125867-lensboard-adapters-for-Rittreck-cameras
You say you want to unscrew the lens from the retaining ring, but you also said that from the back, you can see there is no retaining ring. What is the lens screwed into, if anything? A picture of the back would help.
The large grey lensboard does not look contemporary with the lens or the small lensboard. It looks much newer, like it belongs to a postwar monorail. What is it like on the back? It looks to me like the small black board was mounted to the gray board by sandwiching it to the thing on the back, with the screws whose ends you can see. (If all else fails you can probably drill out those screw ends.)
Did you push on the two levers, or on the mystery pins? It almost looks like the pins are intended to be pushed down, pulled up, or slid sideways to free the levers.
The lens appears to be screwed into a very tight hole in the large gray board, or maybe just a tight fit held in by whatever the mechanism on the front is, or by the 4 small screws that go into the back board. You're right, I misspoke about the "retaining ring." I just tried to unscrew the lens from the board.
Yeah, I'm considering drilling out the screws, although I'm not sure that would actually release anything. They're small screws, so I could even try prying the thin back board off of them.
I'll post a picture of the back tomorrow, when it's light in my elaborate studio.
Yes, I used a full-sized screwdriver (not jewelers-sized one) to push as hard as I could on both the levers and the posts, in every direction. The levers look like they're intended to move, but they don't.
The small lever with the knurling might be a release lever, so try pushing it one way or the other and see if it disengaged something and releases something...
The grey board is an add-on to the smaller board and have been joined later... The retaining ring is probably under the black board, so first see how the two boards are joined, and held together...
Steve K
reddesert
7-Oct-2019, 23:56
I have an idea ... Look up information about the ICA / Zeiss Juwel.
http://forum.mflenses.com/ica-zeiss-universal-juwel-queen-of-german-plate-cameras-t51144.html
https://www.flickr.com/photos/vajra23/32824516158
I've never held one of these. Some of them mount the lens with a bayonet, and the lock knobs/pins have some resemblance. I think one can also see where the finder may have been cut away from the black lensboard. There is a manual on butkus.org, although it doesn't describe the locking mechanism in much detail. Maybe it's hard to move from disuse or from being pinched by the mounting to the gray lensboard.
Steven Tribe
8-Oct-2019, 03:38
Just to confirm what has been suggested!
The rough black lens board has been removed from a scrap ICA Juvel - complete with the "smart?" shutter bayonet mounting device. Voigtlander had a similar system on the bergheil camera. See the diagram below.
Reddesert and Mr Tribe,
I think you're right! The Flickr picture of the front of the camera does have a very similar pin at 10:30. And the article says that a 15cm Tessar was standard on this model.
Steven, I think you're correct that the lens and board were taken off a Juval and mounted on the 114mm board.
The bad news is that this was a kind of DIY project, and I may find that the threads on the back of the shutter are damaged. I can see dribbles of some kind of black lacquer or glue around the threads.
I think the four screws on the back board are the key. I'm going to try drilling or grinding them out and see what is released. The good news here is that as long as the rear element is screwed into the lens, grinding on the back of the board won't shoot filings into the shutter.
We'll see if that solves the problem. I was hoping that this was an exotic but standard installation that someone here would know about, but apparently that's not the case.
Jim Noel
8-Oct-2019, 13:48
I would put drop of Acetone on the rear of each of the visible screws or bolts. Then I would drill them out.
I agree with other posts that this is obviously a poor effort to mount a lens to a board for which it does not fit.
It definitely was originally a bayonet mount for a Zeiss Jewel, or possibly a Bergheil. Once the most rearward board is removed by whatever means I believe the solution to the rest of the problem will be evident.
Thanks to everyone.
I think now I at least have a way to proceed, and I'm satisfied that I'm not missing/overlooking a simple and obvious way to dismantle the thing.
I think the easiest first step is to hacksaw through the two pins on the front (depending on how tough the material is) and see if that allows the lens to turn and presumably, unscrew from the board.
If that doesn't work, I'll have to find someone with a drill press and drill out the screws. Doing it by hand is too scary, because going a millimeter too far puts the drill into the shutter.
The round board on the back is steel, a little over 2 millimeters thick, AND a perfect fit on the back of the big board, so prying it off isn't an option. No way to get under it.
For what it's worth, here are two pictures of the back, one in soft light and one in direct sunlight.
I would think that the pins on the front would be threaded and would turn out if you went at them with a pair of pliers. It would be easier than using a hacksaw, that is if it works.
Success!
I hacksawed off one of the pins.
It turned out that while it looked like the levers were just stopped against the pins, they were actually fitted into slots cut in the pins, and that engagement was what was holding the lens down.
Cutting one of the pins allowed the lens to move just enough to disengage from the other pin, and the lens was freed!
The bad news is that there is no retaining ring at all.
The good news is that it's a Compur 1 shutter and needs the same 41.5mm retaining ring as a Copal 1. Pretty easy to find.
I'll post pictures of the inner workings tomorrow, just for closure.
Thanks again to everyone who offered suggestions.
Sanford,
I tried turning the pins with pliers. Didn't work.
They appear to be riveted or maybe brazed onto the back of the black board.
Old-timey quality construction. :-)
Picture of the back of the lens.
Note that the things that I was calling "levers" aren't levers at all. They're non-moveable tabs, screwed into the back of the shutter. (They're at about 2 and 8 o'clock in this backwards picture.)
The picture of the front of the board isn't very informative, but it shows the scar from the sawing in the lower right, and the remaining pin in the upper left.
This was clearly a factory installation (on the small black board), but I really don't understand what the complicated structure accomplished. All it does really is hold the lens to the black board, which a retaining ring would have done just as well. This just adds extra parts and extra operations to the mounting process.
So, German engineering?
Steven Tribe
10-Oct-2019, 15:37
These mass produced German folding cameras had no separate lens boards/front standards. access to retaining rings was through the back of the camera when the ground glass panel was pulled out. changing lenses was not easy. Voigtlander and others developed these locking/release systems to avoid this cumbersome procedure for the benefit of the more adventurous amateur photographers who wanted try out lenses with different focal lengths etc.
Bah!
It's NOT the same as a Copal 1, just a tiny bit bigger.
So I may have to get a ring from S.K.Grimes, for $40.00.
Wish I'd seen this thread a bit earlier. It appears to be a section cut from the front standard of an ICA or Zeiss Ideal camera, you just needed to depress the chrome plated lever and rotate the shutter clockwise slightly to remove it from the bayonet mount. The chrome lever was spring loaded - assuming it's still as designed, someone has really had a good hack at it to mount that section on a larger lens board.
I have a number of those cameras in different formats (9x12, 10x15 and 13x18), the bayonet mount works perfectly on all of them. Don't knock 20s and 30s German engineering!
The mount system on a Juwel was rather different (and the older wooden Juwel cameras are completely different). Quite a few lenses turn up on eBay with the Ideal bayonet mounting wings visible on the back of the shutter, lots of Tessars, Maximars and Protars.
If you can re-attach the bayonet post maybe you can use it as is - remove the screws added later and screw that plate onto a lens board for your camera.
Yes, the chrome lever was spring loaded, and it was easy to depress it and release the "anti-twist" pin. Unfortunately, when the lever was depressed, the lens still wouldn't move at all in either direction.
I think the DIY mounting interfered in some way with the bayonet mount.
Ron (Netherlands)
20-Oct-2019, 15:23
It is just a standard ICA or later ZEISS IKON bayonet fitting for lens/shutter combo's with compur or compound shutters. Most of my ICA's have this same early bayonet fittings. In many cases the little springs are gone. When you push the little lever, you have to turn the whole combo clockwise the get it released.
Apparently the original black lens board was fixed with screws or iron dowels to the silver lens board.
The early ICA system was later changed by Zeiss, instead of 3 points it became a 4 point bayonet with a lever below the shutter combo whereas the ICA lever is normally found above the combo. Nice to have such a system if you can find the shutters with the 'wings' attached at the back that will fit the bayonet.
https://live.staticflickr.com/7356/13295654243_c2d2b97478_n.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/mfTGMZ)
Carl Zeiss, Zeiss - Icar 13,5 cm f:6,3 (Allemagne) (https://flic.kr/p/mfTGMZ) by Gilles Péris y Saborit (https://www.flickr.com/photos/42250269@N06/), on Flickr
MauroScacco
7-Jun-2021, 10:25
Hi, good evening! I have a similar lens on a Ica Ideal Nelson 225 (150mm tessar f 4,5) and i would like unscrew the lens for using that on Linhof. The problem is that to remove the lens you have to rotate to the left and the upper cylindrical structure prevents rotation. Perhaps not all lenses can be interchangeable? Thanks Mauro Italy
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51231926673_c379a9fd94_c.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2m4c1Uz)DSC02245 (https://flic.kr/p/2m4c1Uz) by Mauro Scacco (https://www.flickr.com/photos/mauroscaccophotography/), su Flickr
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51231011862_13a0868f84_c.jpg (https://flic.kr/p/2m47jXY)DSC02246 (https://flic.kr/p/2m47jXY) by Mauro Scacco (https://www.flickr.com/photos/mauroscaccophotography/), su Flickr
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