I recently picked up a Conley 5x7 Folding Camera in fairly good exterior condition. All hardware moves freely, nothing is bent or binding.
The only issue is the lens. It could use a good cleaning of the internal faces of the elements, and after 110+ years the shutter is pretty sticky. It's my understanding that a good flush w/ contact cleaner can help with this, but first the lend needs to come off. My experience with disassembling large format camera begins and ends with view cameras w/ lenses mounted on swappable lens boards, so easy to remove and clean a lens in that configuration.
My big question is: How would a lens on a camera of this type be removed? Is it threaded on? Does the front standard need to be disassembled to get to a locking ring on the back of the mounting plate?
Any help that anyone can provide would be much appreciated.
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