It’s been a tough week.
As a soft, diffuse light began to envelope Zion’s autumnal foliage, I quickly began to set up the Linhof 617 and the 90mm Super Angulon Lens. However, just as I was about to shoot, I noticed that the entire lens front assembly had wound itself loose by around 5mm. A sigh of frustration accompanied the realisation that I wasn’t going to be shooting anything that particular day …
A quick email to the ever-helpful Paula Pell-Johnson at Linhof Studio confirmed that the Copal shutter needed repair. The problem had arisen through the over-use (and over-tightening) of the centre-filter for the lens. In a nutshell, if one screws the centre filter too tight then it has a nasty habit of unwinding the entire lens assembly when undone. The silly thing is that there is no need to put it on so tight - just a couple of turns and it’s loosely but perfectly in place.
After looking at a couple of service centres (Marflex Service, 252-652-4401 and Hp Marketing, 1-800-735-4373), I ended up calling S K Grimes in Rhode Island. The matter was expertly handled by Lauren and after overnight-shipping the lens is repaired to new (the team also managed to change a couple of aperture blades which had been damaged).
My congratulations to SK Grimes for their exemplary work.
