Commando quality revisited

[PaulC]

I ran a new test on the Ensign Commando, using a 5D Mk2 as the light meter. Last time the lab mucked up the development but after I had a chat with them they made the effort to get it right this time. I took the shots around noon, so the light conditions couldn't be much worse.

First, the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha:



Next, a Jalibut moored outside the museum, identified by its vertical prow - I mistakenly ID'd it as a shuwa'i originally.



And here is the museum viewed from the east side:



A view of the line-up of different kinds of dhow, the large trading boum is in the foreground. Then two 72dpi crops taken from that picture scanned at 65MB, which is about 22 megapixels, to show the detail of the sheaves in the rigging of the boum and the flags and wind-blown palms - I was waiting to get the flags just right in this shot.





I reckon the Commando, its rangefinder, the Epsilon shutter and the 75mm/3.5 Ensar lens all pass muster.

[scsambrook]

Now you want an Autorange 820 and an Autorange 16/20 to keep it company (see http://www.cosmonet.org/camera/index_e.html) - !

I wonder why Ensign never made an Autorange 12/20?

[fish4570]

pass muster, indeed. love the juxtaposition of the ancient vessel types with the ultra modern oil-money skyline. where do the boatbuilders get their wood for the dhows and boumas?

[PaulC]

[PaulC]

[scsambrook]

[PaulC]

Yes, the 820 was much later but the date given for the manual on that link would coincide with the final big push they did with the last version of the Commando. I think the company was also undergoing a merger with Ross at the time, wasn't it? So plans could have been being shaken up.
When the 820 finally did appear it offered a square option, albeit with a longer focal length than normal, and maybe they thought that was enough.

[Seele]

I had a play with an Ensign Autorange 820 and found that it has a fundamental design fault: another example of scatty Ensignery I guess.

Think of the whole lens, baseboard, bellows mounted in a crate as a self-contained unit, and in a rollfilm folder, it is fitted - and integral - to the rollfilm system. In the 820, thtey remained two separate units, and the focussing action alters how far the crate extends from the rollfilm unit.

This creates a very frustrating scenario: you use the rangefinder to do the focussing, and when you grab the sides of the camera - the roll holders so to speak - your fingers would push the crate back to the infinity position.

Ensign got burnt by the film plane focussing system in the Commando, as the spring cannot be assured to give a constant pressure on the back of the backing paper, to ensure film flatness and precise positioning. The Autorange 220 was a more sensible solution, copied from Newman & Guardia's Sibyl but was not really nice to use for an eye-level camera.

[PaulC]

I wondered about the effects of cranking the film gate to and fro. So far, I don't seem to have had a flatness problem, at least, not one that it obvious to me. I suppose it could vary from camera to camera or perhaps the thinner backing paper of modern films is easier for the pressure plate to deal with.

A bigger problem with commandos today seems to be the broken patent wind-on lock. Unfortunately, I can't find any instructions on the net on how to get inside the thing to sort out the problem and I don't want to mess about aimlessly with a camera that is working well.

Ensign does not seem to have been a very well-managed company, in terms of strategic planning (e.g. let's not bother getting sucked in to this nasty 35mm fad) or it ability to assess the viability of its innovations.

[Seele]

[scsambrook]