22 | February | 2022

Yesterday I spent a day trying to set up a rangefinder on one of the old Zorki cameras. I noticed that when shooting at a fully open aperture at a distance of 1 m, that everything is completely wrong. The picture shows that it focuses about half a meter closer. Which is a big problem when shooting with a shallow depth of field 🤔

For the correct setting, it would be sufficient if the 1m mark on the lens focused on subjects at a distance of 1m. Unfortunately, it does not focusing. So all that was left was to disassembly the camera. With the right routine, you get time during disassembly and assembly that even F1 mechanics would not be ashamed of when changing tires. It was therefore necessary to precisely position the photographed object within a distance of 1 m and to try to focus on the focus screen made of a piece of old film.

Thanks to the fact that I buy film in reels of thirty meters, I was able to make several cassettes with film for 2-3 shots. I then always developed them up and looked at the results of my experiments. So I ended up with a better result yesterday than when I started. Even if the result is better, it’s still bad. Today I will continue if time allows.