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Nikon FE2: Adjustment

Transcript

Hello everybody .We have this nice [Nikon] FE2 [35mm film camera], and we got it all back together. Got the wiring in it. I haven’t wired these up yet; it’s not a big deal. I’m going to get it ready for testing.

We’re going to go ahead and test this [Nikon FE2] and see how he’s doing on the machine. We have a little Zimmerman shutter tester and we’ll cut to that later because I’ve got to do one thing at a time. We’ll go over to the machine over here and we’ll get that done. I’ll show you how I adjust it, what tolerances we’re looking at, and we should be all — you know — things should come in really nice.

Start with the ASA dial

To prepare it: first, we need an ASA dial. We don’t know where the ASA is sitting. It could be there, there — who knows where 100 ASA is. So go ahead and put on a comp dial first. That tells us where the little marks are. I’m only going to put it on one screw; there’s no reason to put all three of them in there. You can if you want, but it’s just a waste of time.

Match up the coupler

Get the coupler — [the] coupler’s going to go on there. Check the fork and a little pin. Look through the middle; line it up. Drop it down, rotate it, so zero on the comp dial is at the red mark. That can be anywhere. [Comp dial clicks into place] Voila! Then I like to put the plate on to hold it in place so It doesn’t fall out. It doesn’t jump out. [There’s] nothing like doing all your adjustments and finding out this fork had jumped out on you. Go ahead and you just put this last screw in, It doesn’t matter which one it is. That’s all set on this, on that side.

Reset the counter

Over here [the film winder] — this is an FE2, which means if your counter isn’t on number one, the meter does not work, and auto exposure will not work. This needs to be on number one. There’s two ways you can get it on number one.

  1. You can hold it there and then try to fiddle wit, but it’s a pain in the butt. You can put a small piece of tape that goes from this plate to your counter. In this position over here or anywhere after one, no problem.
  2. Or you can do kind of the easy way and that is to get a Q-tip — Q-tip cotton bud — whatever you want to call it. I like to cut them. Let’s put it where the door would push the system in and I don’t have to advance and release hands down and release; you just get in there and just kind of slide it around and now I will have speeds. We got the Q-tip in, there we go. Voila! It’s all set and ready to go. Put this at whatever speed I want it and start.

Put the speed dial on

I could put the speed dial on, let’s go ahead and do that. It’ll be quick and easy for your reference. I don’t really need it. I can just look inside the viewfinder, but it’s really hard for me to video tape inside the camera’s viewfinder.

So, 125 [points to film speed dial] — all speeds are there. Boom.

Adjusting the metering system and viewfinder

Now, the other thing I want to tell you about before we get all adjusting here, is that there are three screws holding this metering system in. You notice at no point did I have to physically take the meter out. That screw and that screw come out. This [third screw] can stay in place. Just loosen it.

I usually tend to come all the way out when I feel it loosening, then I go back in about a turn, maybe two turns. But once it’s out, there it is a little bit of an adjustment you need inside because it does have some slop [looseness].

I don’t know if you can tell, but that’s moving, so in the viewfinder you’re going to see it. I try to get it looking at least even in the viewfinder so the gap at the top and the gap at the bottom are both even.

Once you get an FE2. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, when you take a look at an FE2, you’ll see [what I’m talking about] inside the viewfinder.

Then right about there is correct [Jim looks through the viewfinder], tighten it a little bit. Do a final adjustment and go ahead and just tighten them up. Take one last look. It’s beautiful and we’re all set.

Test on the Zimmerman

We’re going to go ahead and go over to the machine [Zimmerman] now and you’ll see the machine up and running and we’ll start to see what this thing’s going to do and adjust if it needs adjusting. We’ll just go through the procedure here.

Alright, so we’re going to go on over now.

Zimmerman set up

Okay, let’s see how this works. I’ve got my FE2 on my ZTS tester and it’s going to [log an] error because the sensor is covered, and I keep messing with the sensor. A test lens is a nice little Nikkor, 50mm 1.4. This one happens to be an AIS, but if it’s AI and will couple into this, this F-stop ring, that’s all you really need.

Alright, so my adjustment pots [are] on this side, of course away from the camera. (I just can’t set it up on the other side.) I have my Q-tip in, the counter’s past one — it’s on 11 or 13 right now. This is my sensor. My sensor goes into the focal plane.

Alright so what I’ll do is, I will test and see what my initial exposures are.

Set the light level and get initial results

I know on this light level, which is EV16 —15, sorry 15 — that it should be a 16th of a second at 125. Right now, I’m in auto [on the speed meter], so this should be giving me a 125.

I’m going to go ahead and I’ll release it [the shutter], and my machine is giving me exposure error of 0.64. So, a little over a half a stop exposure error and my exposure time in milliseconds, which is my runtime —it should be 125 and it’s actually running a16th of a second. So not too good — about a 60. It’s about a speed off, not a big deal. We’ll get that out of there so I’m going to look down on my meter and see how my meter is looking and it says it’s pretty much on 60.

Adjust auto exposure first

What I’m going to go ahead and do is adjust my meter and adjust my auto exposure. We’ll go ahead and do auto exposure first. I put this [black cloth] over to block the light out. A lot of that light can affect my cells, which are sitting right here. I’ll do a quick drape over [the cells] as well and take one last exposure to see how that is.

It didn’t really change much, so the bright lights — what’s going around in the room — is not that bright to the cells, so it doesn’t affect it much. However, when I go to lower lights, then this ambient light will affect the meter a lot more.

I know the adjustment is in the back. This [cell] is the auto exposure. I don’t know which way to turn it, so I just go one direction and see if it’s better or worse. [after the adjustment] That’s at least a half stop off now. It was a little over half a stop, so I’ll go a little bit further. 0.09 — that’s a tenth of a stop.

The speed is at 10.8. It should be eight. Ideally it should be 125, so 125 is actually 8.00, but it’s giving me a fantastic exposure. No reason to mess around with a good exposure.

Next, adjust the meter

Once I did the adjustment on the auto, the meter just came down right where it should [be], that’s why I didn’t go after these two [cells], adjusting my meter right away. It throws auto off even further, and then you adjust auto, and it throws the meter off, so you’re constantly chasing yourself.

On this [camera] I always like to do auto first. If auto works, it’ll also change the metering inside, and the needle will move when you adjust auto. Sometimes, like this one, just came right around.

I like to go to 125 and I’m going to keep on auto for a second. I’m going to go down in light levels — this is EV12. Let’s see just what’s just supposed to be. It should be a pretty slow shutter speed.

You can hear that [slow shutter] — 0.07 is my error. It’s not even a tenth of a stop. Place the black cloth over the top to make sure I’m not getting any extraneous light in there, test again, and it’s just doing beautifully.

Oh, no big deal on that one. That [shutter speed] is looking really great. It should be a 15th of a second. It’s right on the money.

This camera did not have a lot of fussing around. I didn’t even have to adjust a high and low. If I would have had an issue with the camera, I would have adjusted the high and low potentiometers, but everything is just really right on the money. I like that it’s giving good exposures. It’s going to be a beautiful camera for someone to have.

Continue checking various speeds

I tend to release [the shutter] a few times and check all my speeds, so I can go all the way through, starting at one second. Oops — I started half a second.  I started half a second and it should be one second. Half a second — 0.8, sorry 800 — and 487 milliseconds, so that’s right on.

I’m looking at my speeds. I know what I should be getting. I’ve been doing this a long time. Checking my speeds. This [setting] should be 33 — it’s at 30, so that’s perfect. At a 60th, it should be 16. It’s giving me a 15, so that’s really nice.

Factory tolerance

I know a lot of people might say, “Oh my God, you’re not perfect.” You’ll never get them perfect. You need to know when to stop, what the factory tolerance is, and this is well within factory tolerance.

Factory tolerance from this thing is over half is about a half a stop Nikon doesn’t ever really like to get post a half a stop on anything, but it will on the older stuff. Nothing that’s newer like the FE2. But if you’re looking at an FE, FEs actually go up to 0.6 on their errors.

It’s ready to put back together

So, this is a really good camera. Pretty much everything I need [to do], I’ve done, so I’m going to go ahead and stop this. I’m going to go ahead and then prep it for putting the top on. We’ll put the top on and check it again, and then we’ll be done with it.

We can put it up for sale and know [when this camera goes] out, the customer is going to be happy. and it’s going to stay out the most important thing. All exposures should be fairly decent.

Thank you for watching. Please leave any comments if you are confused by anything that I did and please subscribe.

Take care. Bye