Topic: Sears KS 2 won't focus to inifinity

[astrobeck]

Well...it's me again with yet another dilemma.
My new to me, Sears KS 2 won't focus at infinity. It's a Ricoh  XR-7, rebadged. It seems it needs just a little tiny bit more past infinity to reach the focus point.
The camera works great other wise and yes, it was a stray that found its way to my house.

Any tips for repair? Or do I just take the lens and chuck the body...which I never do by the way.
Thanks.

[John Robison]

When I have a SLR that does that the first thing I check is if screen focus agrees with film plane focus. The shutter needs to be locked open on ‘B’ and a fine ground glass (improvised if necessary) set on the inside film rails. Then you first check screen focus wide open at a measured distance of 7 feet and infinity. Then open and lock the shutter and check if film plane is the same as screen focus. If it is not, then either the screen, or more likely the mirror position is out of adjustment.
Different cameras have different means to adjust this so it’s a ‘look and see’ sort of approach from there.

If, on the other hand the film plane and screen focus agree, then it is likely the lens focusing mechanism that is off. On some lenses the lens focus ring can be loosened and reset so that the infinity mark can be placed on the index mark with the lens focus at infinity. Many lens helicals will focus past infinity so that adjustment can be made for lens variations.

Edit; Sounds complicated but don’t give up! Also a 10X loop is nice to have to check film plane focus but a spare 50mm lens, held to the eye backwards will suffice also.

[Francois]

You could also reverse-collimate the lens-camera setup.
Take a piece of frosted plastic the width of the film (an old CD jewel case door that you scratch the heck out of works). On the shiny side, use a fine point sharpie and draw an X from corner to corner.
Set the defective camera on B, lock everything open with a cable release, open the back and fix the plastic on the film gate (tape or rubber bands).
Take another camera with the longest focal length lens you can find, put both lenses at infinity and look through both lenses. The film plane should be tack sharp.

[Pete_R]

On the principle it best to do the easy things first, do you have another K mount lens? If so, try that on the camera. If that's OK, it's the lens at fault, if it's the same, it's the camera at fault.

If it's the camera, this is the instructions for adjusting the focus in a KR-7 which I assume will be the same.



If it's the lens then there may be screws under the rubber grip you can loosen to adjust the focus ring but, if not, usually you need to remove the front of the lens.

[astrobeck]

Thanks everyone.
I used another lens to test and it's the camera.
The KS2 is quite nice so I'm going to attempt repair. Hopefully there will be a successful news bulletin later today. 

[astrobeck]

The bottoms plate is off, but mine doesn't match the diagram.... photo below...Back to more reserch
Edit**  By placing a thin double folded peice of sticky note under the mirror when it is in the down position, everything at infinity comes into focus.

[astrobeck]

well rats!
It stopped working entirely now.
It is wound on, but the shutter won't fire.
New batteries, etc....the usual checks and no go.
Dang, I liked this one too. 

[Pete_R]

I just think it's a poor diagram. Try looking through this gap...

[Pete_R]

well rats!
It stopped working entirely now.
It is wound on, but the shutter won't fire.
New batteries, etc....the usual checks and no go.
Dang, I liked this one too. 

Try removing the the sticky note under the mirror. There might be a switch that senses when the mirror is down and you might have stopped it closing.

[astrobeck]

Pete, I looked in that other little hole, thinking the same thing and there's no adjustment screw in there to be seen. Just a fork/blade looking thing that moves out of the way when the camera is cocked.
The sticky note is out from under the mirror, but still nothing happening. I'm quite puzzled as the shutter was firing really well. Even with the bottom plate off it was firing. I probably bumped something.
I'm going to try and figure it out. It's really a charming camera and one I had wanted for a few years.

EDIT*** Gremlins! After lightly tapping around the bottom edge of the camera with a metal ruler, the shutter is firing again....however, when I advance the wind on lever, the shutter curtain is up while it is cocked now. When I fire the shutter the curtain goes back down as it should. This is a metal horizontal curtain.
Frustrating for sure.

[Pete_R]

I'm pretty sure that's where the adjustment screw is. Maybe it's become loose and fallen out and that's why the focus is off.

The camera uses an electromagnet to release the mirror and, on other cameras I'm familiar with, they often cause problems by sticking. And sometimes tapping the camera, as you did, can jar them loose and they'll work for a while until they stick again.

Not sure about the way the shutter is behaving though.

The repair manual is at https://learncamerarepair.com/product.php?product=437&category=2&secondary=11 but I'm not sure it will help much.

[Francois]

Shutter problems are always a pain on SLR's.
I had a Nikon where all shots were at top speed. It turns out there was something on the 2nd curtain's electromagnet that somehow got displaced when using the camera.
On another one, this time a Praktica, the shutter would remain open while winding. I killed that one while trying to fix it.
The third one was a Chinon with the mirror stuck down. By the point where I had fixed it there was a broken solder joint somewhere I was never able to find, so I turned it into an X-pan like camera.

[Pete_R]

Shutter problems are always a pain on SLR's.

As long as you don't squirt oil into them like the one below, they can usually be fixed.

This is one I received recently. I had to dismantle the shutter to clean al the individual parts.

[Francois]

That must have been a real pain to fix.
I already hate having to do similar work on aperture blades and central shutters, and these are easily accessible most of the time, so I can only imagine what it must have been like.

[astrobeck]

and the saga continues.....
I put the camera bottom plate back on, and just set it aside for a few hours and did some other chores around the house.
Later I picked the camera back up and was advancing and then tripping the shutter and watching the shutter curtain do it's funky trick when on about the sixth advance, the shutter curtain returned to normal operation. I've got a roll of film loaded in it to test that part of the operation and will see if it is indeed behaving.
The big question is should I trust it? And will I ever find the adjustment screw for making the focus line up with infinity....
to be continued.....