I bought a Canham MQC off of one of the members here. Other than a bent knob (which I knew about before buying) it's in really good shape. Some of the locks needed adjustment, and I am having trouble making the standards open up square to each other because of the very weak detents. I called up Canham to order a new knob and got a huge amount of information on the how to adjust the camera, and how to fix the bent thread on the knob. After a an hour of adjusting the camera now locks down consistently for both front and back standards and focus knobs.
I asked Canham about the detents and he said they could be drilled out a bit bigger which would make it setup more consistently, but would also make small tilts more difficult. Basically he said it was intentionally designed this way, as most users put a small bit of tilt in every shot. Once you do that it you need to adjust by eye so it's more important to be able to make small adjustments than to have the standards square. This isn't how I normally have been working, but I'm willing to give it a try.
After the fall is over I will probably send the camera in for a cleaning and check over by the factory, where it will also have some modernization done (stop pins added to the focus locks) and possibly the detents drilled out. Have any MQC users had the detents drilled out, and if so, are you happy having done that? Have only of you gotten used to the non existent detents after being initially bothered by them?
It was also suggested that the back could lock down stronger by using brass washers, but they would rub brass into the anodizing. I bought some when I got a new thread for the knob. I must say it does lock down much better with the brass than the nylon washers. The camera now feels really rigid.
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