Zenit Quarz 8XL questions

Simon Jon Knight · October 18, 2012

Hi everyone..

Just got my hands on a superb example of the above camera - in its original bag with both (cased) ND lenses and sunshade. For a little over £20..!

ok, in light of the fact I cannot find a manual online ANYWHERE....

How does the light meter/ auto and manual exposure meter work? I assume it's the dial on the left side at the rear/top, but marked with the helpful markings of 0, PP3 and AP3. Anyone help me there??

ALSO

I can't get the ground glass to focus on all distances. I assume i've set up the eyepiece diopter wrongly. I've set the focus ring to infinity and the zoom to full wide (8mm). I've then pointed the ground glass circle at a lit wall and got it in clear focus. Ok, but anything about 1 meter away now wont give me full focus...

Any thoughts again...??

Thanks for any help... And any filmmakers in the Bristol area? I need to do some networking!!

Regards

Simon Knight

MediaHound Film

Richard Tuohy · October 18, 2012

Hi everyone..

Just got my hands on a superb example of the above camera - in its original bag with both (cased) ND lenses and sunshade. For a little over £20..!

ok, in light of the fact I cannot find a manual online ANYWHERE....

How does the light meter/ auto and manual exposure meter work? I assume it's the dial on the left side at the rear/top, but marked with the helpful markings of 0, PP3 and AP3. Anyone help me there??

ALSO

I can't get the ground glass to focus on all distances. I assume i've set up the eyepiece diopter wrongly. I've set the focus ring to infinity and the zoom to full wide (8mm). I've then pointed the ground glass circle at a lit wall and got it in clear focus. Ok, but anything about 1 meter away now wont give me full focus...

Any thoughts again...??

Thanks for any help... And any filmmakers in the Bristol area? I need to do some networking!!

Regards

Simon Knight

MediaHound Film

Hi Simon,

with the exception of Beaulieu cameras (and perhaps the Leicina special) Super 8 cameras don't have ground glass in the viewfinder system. Instead they rely on a so-called 'areal-image'. To focus an areal-image eyepiece diopter involves a different proceedure from focusing a ground-glass viewfinder diopter. To focus the former, put the lens on maximum zoom and focus on maximum (infinity). Now look at an object a long way away (say over 20 meters) and focus the diopter. I don't know what kind of focusing aid this model has. I am guessing that what you have been calling the ground glass is a focusing aid vissible in the centre of the viewfinder area. It may well be a microprism style focusing aid. If so, get the microprism image of the object you are looking at as sharp as you can.

As for the meter, the dial probably has 2 click positions, in addition to an area where you can put the dial in various non-clicking positions. The various non-clicking positions will be the 'manual' positions. You should see the indicator in the viewfinder change as you move through this zone of the dial. One of the 'click' positions will be auto. if this is working, you should see the exposure indicator in the viewfinder respond to different amounts of light when in this position. The last click position could well be just 'off'.

hope that helps,

richard

Simon Jon Knight · October 19, 2012

Hi Richard,

Thanks for the reply.. Yep! confirms what i discovered about the meter.. It was too dark in my room to see the meter moving, so have found the manual and auto exposure settings and they are working fine..

And yes, i realise my mistake with it NOT being ground glass and in fact a spilt prism focusser like my old Canon SLR. So do I focus the diopter by the same method? i.e. set focus to infinity and zoom to fully zoomed in? (mine is 40mm)

Cheers

Simon K