Focussing Ebony 45S

[Fred Braakman]

Hi, I have the Ebony 45S camera, and in addition, I have the Ebony 3.5X hand focusing loupe. I have had some focussing problems show up in some of my shots, and I wonder if I am using the focussing loupe incorrectly. I have been focussing with the loupe held in front of my eye, while moving the standard until the scene looks in focus to me. Should I, instead, be placing the loupe directly on the ground glass itself, while focussing?

Thanks.

Fred Braakman

[Amund BLix Aaeng]

Yep, you should be using the loupe directly on the ground glass.

Best of luck

Amund

[Paul-Owen]

Hi Fred. I have to disagree with the previous post. The Ebony loupe is designed more like a hand-held magnifier and so you don't use it ON the ground glass like regular loupes - rather you hold it away from the glass to suit your eyesight. When I use one I hold it an inch or so from the screen - imagine using a hand-magnifier with a sheet of newspaper; you need to hold it above the sheet for it to "work". Good luck Paul

[Amund BLix Aaeng]

Ah, I wasn`t aware of how the Ebony loupe works, sorry...

[Leonard Evens]

Where a loupe focuses can depend on your eyesight and where you place your eye. I find that for me, usually it is best to place it on the gg, but, after cataract surgery, I now have essentially fixed vision close to 20/20. But before that when I was very nearsighted, it could depend on whether or not I was wearing glasses. You should practice with it on something else such as print or even a transparency on a light table, to see where it comes into best focus for you. Then you will know where to put it when using it with your camera.

[Brian Ellis]

The usual (I think) technique is to get the focus as close as possible to the way you want it without the loupe and use the loupe only to double check and maybe fine tune things, especially in corners where it's often darker. I use reading glasses for the first part since my close-up vision isn't what it used to be and then use a loupe for the second. I almost always end up making some fine adjustment with the loupe but I get things about 95% right with the reading glasses alone. I mention this because it sounds like you're using the loupe right off the bat for your focusing. There's nothing wrong with that if it works for you, to each his or her own etc. etc., but it doesn't sound like it's working. Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you're doing, in which case you can ignore this message.

[Joe_6286]

When you say out of focus or not sharp - are you looking at the neg or trannie with a magnifier loupe and see that it's not sharp, and if so how much magnification? If you are using say an 8x loupe on your neg, then perhaps you could use a higher magnification loupe for the groundglass - maybe 6x or 7x. Also, if you are not holding the 3.5 Ebony loupe steady, it may be hard to really see if the image is really focused as sharp as possible.

[Doug Dolde]

I had an Ebony and found the ground glass/fresnel to be quite hard to use. It seemed almost "muddy". A Maxwell screen fixed that and made it quite usable.

[Fred Braakman]

Thanks for the response. I have been using the loupe like looking through a magnifying glass, since when I place it on the GG it is completely out of focus. Perhaps there are other factors that cause some loss of sharpness in my shots, since when I do focus through the GG, it appears quite sharp. I recently upgraded to a more sturdy tripod, so maybe this will help a bit.

Doug, where can one obtain a Maxwell screen, and does it easily adapt to the Ebony?

Thanks.
Fred

[darr]

See:

http://www.rolleirepairs.com/maxscreen.htm
http://www.mattclara.com/maxwell/html/hiluxview.html