Question on the Kodak Medalist I

[Big Dawg]

A question on my Medalist camera. I plan on using the focusing screen in my accessory back but will the rangefinder give me as sharp a focus as the focusing screen and built in magnifier? If I can mount the film holder before focusing. Would just save a little time.

[Nesster]

I have an un-modified Medalist I & the RF is very accurate. Depends, I suppose, on whether the back puts the film plane exactly in the same place as for a roll film.

I think there are manuals around that may talk about this. I've found ground glass focusing with these 2x3 cameras can be difficult, with my eyesight etc.

[Nesster]

In sequence of introduction the Kodak Ektra camera followed Kodak's Medalist 620 camera, which had been an exercise in film flatness -
footnote: Most of the basic research in film flatness was done for this camera because of problems encountered in trying to build a folding camera with an f/3.5 lens. The problem rested in the fact that roll film was designed to overcome the curl of the roll by a slight tendency to curl with the edges inward (toward the lens). At large lens openings, the curling made the edges unsharp; the same problem was true with press cameras, which were generally unsharp at large openings because the sheet film was not completely flat in the holder and even less so in film packs. The resulting design of the Kodak Medalist camera gave the film a two-way curl, thus overcoming the problem. The Medalist was one of the sharpest picture takers ever produced by Kodak and introduced the concept of interchangeable backs, at least to the extent of allowing a ground-glass back to be substituted for the regular back, and a cut-film holder to be used in place of roll film. While the idea was not new, most cameras, such as the Kodak Recomar, used the opposite approach. Kodak had never before produced a roll film attachment for a plate camera

- p. 218, Glass, Brass, & Chrome, The American 35mm Miniature Camera, by Kalton C. Lahue and Joseph A. Bailey, University of Oklahoma Press, 1972

[Big Dawg]

[Nesster]

http://www.nwmangum.com/Kodak/MedBack-1.html

the answer is no, the rf will not work with the cut film back.

[Big Dawg]