Just bought a Fujinon 135/5.6 W ( first type )

[Vaughan]

A tip with the Seiko shutters, particularly the 0: do NOT try to open the blades with the shutter uncocked, and never apply much force. The opening lever (dunno its proper name) has a small pin riveted to the end. If the shutter is not cocked the blades won't open and the force applied to the lever will weaken the pin rivet joint and allow the pin to move. When this happens the shutter blades won't open fully when the lever is actuated. This will encourage more force to be applied which will bend the lever itself.

It's not a difficult job to open the shutter and tighten the rivet joint on the pin and straighten the lever, but the rivet joint is small and it can fail. I have one shutter that has the pin epoxied to the lever.

[Vaughan]

cos^4(θ) fall-off... cos^3(θ) fall-off... cos^2(θ) fall-off...

Thanks Mark, I will henceforth refer to cos^N falloff.

[Mark J]

Ha ! That's one way of being correct.

In the meantime a couple of observations .
I read this discussion a couple of days ago :
https://www.largeformatphotography.i...ifying+fujinon
Rawitz's post #10 did concern me, and that may well be the way it was with the earlier lenses. It was certainly more common in the '50's to refer to coverage more generously, as the illumination circle. I thought that would have fallen by the wayside by the late 60's or early 70's. In the worst case, then, it would just give me an excuse to buy an 'NW' ....

However I took the camera and lens ( & tripod ) out on the back porch today and eyeballed the scene ( with buildings and trees ) under the cloth , for a while, and was encouraged. With the front standard set up carefully to be centred, the corner illumination looks OK, it's not dying a sudden death in the corners of 5x7"
At f/5.6 there's some softness from half way out, but it holds up OK almost to the corners. It looks a little better and easier to focus than the SW 105 f/8 that i recently bought.
At f/11 you can see it's a lot sharper most of the way out.
So, I'm looking forward to taking some test shots, and I might get chance tomorrow, we have sun forecast.

[reddesert]

It seems to me that a quarter of a second (250ms) is rather long for an M-sync delay. I always thought flash bulbs reached their peak output in 15-25ms. But unless you’re using flashbulbs this won’t matter, just leave it on X and carry on.

Yes, but sometimes the M sync delay mechanism is sticky. It's a little weird that it manages to move but so slowly as to take a 1/4 second. I have had lenses where it was just stuck, so the shutter appeared non functional on M, but set it to X and it fired normally. It's sort of like the stuck Self Timer of Doom on older cameras, but bypassable by switching to X.

[Mark J]

Maybe so. It might be 1/5th sec, but not 1/40th.

I just got two good exposures of trees in the sun yesterday and developed.
Exposures look about right , at least on 1/8th & 1/4.
I did one at f/ 11-16 and one at f/22
At 11-16 it's sharp over 4x5" but turns soft pretty quickly after that.
At f/22 it's sharp almost to the corners of 5x7" , on the top corners it is going at about 10mm from the corner.
Oddly ( despite setting the front up carefully to be centred to the format ) the lower corners look sharp, although there is foreground grass coming towards the camera here - maybe the field curvature is nulled.
Probably worth another shot later.

When I get chance I'll show some small pics either printed or digi scanned/reversed.