Procedure: Adjusting lens vertical alignment

Thanks to: John Bercovitz


Disclaimer: This data is provided for informational purposes only. You must assess your ability to perform the operations described. Neither the individual contributor nor Rocky Mountain Memories assumes any responsibility for damage you may inflict on your camera by following these directions.

I have had some trouble with my Kodak 3D camera in that the left and right views didn't cover the same objects vertically. That is, you could see more at the bottom of one view than at the bottom of the other. This was easy enough to fix in mounting the stereo slides, but of course it gave fits to the Kodalux/Qualex automatic stereo slide mounting machines. Actually, they didn't worry about it at all; I was the one who was bothered. 8-)

It turns out that the Kodak is very simple to adjust. Between the shutter assembly and the camera body is a thick rubber gasket. The shutter assembly is held to the camera body by four long black screws. Actually, it's the heads of the screws which are long; the threaded ends are relatively short. All you have to do is to loosen those four screws, shift the shutter assembly, and retighten. I used a small piece of ground glass up against the film rails and a 7X loupe to see what the film would be seeing. The screws are located near the extreme corners of the film apertures or gates. If you open the back of the camera, you'll see them.

The compliance of the rubber gasket is also apparently what allows one to set the focus of the lenses at infinity. In my camera, the gasket material is old and not very plump or springy any more. So I actually had to bring the lenses a little closer to the film than I wanted in order to get the screws tight enough to hold the shutter assembly firmly against the camera body. It would have been trivial to change the rubber for fresh if I had wanted to go to the effort. As an alternative, I could have put in some shim stock next to the rubber. As it was, I really couldn't see much effect from overturning the screws the small amount I overturned them.


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