Bolex 16mm H16 camera.

1 inch/25mm lens.

No matter what I do, when I look through the viewfinder, everything is out of focus. I'm concerned that what I'm seeing through the viewfinder is what the shot will look like. Since the viewfinder doesn't seem to give an accurate focus, we take a tape measure and measure the distance from the mid-lens to the subject. Set aperture according to light meter readings.

The lens seems to only ever be in focus through the viewfinder when the aperture is closed up all the way, pointed at a bright light souce, and focus set on infinity.

Any suggestions?

Usually eyepieces themselves have a focus adjuster on them. Im unsure about the H16, i would imagine it would have and this is the problem, if not it is probably some kind of allignment problem with the eyepiece.

Is this the reflex or the non-reflex version?

Either way, you need to adjust the ground glass.

Look through the focusing eyepiece and point the camera at a relatively bright scene. There should be a knob either on top or to the side of the focusing attachment. Adjust until the ground glass is sharply in focus. You can do this without a lens in that position, but if there is a lens, it should be wide open, as stopped down it will have enough DOF to where the image can appear focused at a wide range of positions.

If you are accurate with the tape measure, you don't have to have the eyepiece adjusted correctly. I like to use the tape measure and then check to make sure it seems relatively close in the eyepiece.

if you're measuring from mid-lens to subject, it may be out of focus on telephoto lenses or wide stops.

film cameras will have a mark of a cirle with a line through it like this:



http://photonotes.org/cgi-bin/entry.pl?id=|Filmplanemark

that's what you're supposed to be measuring too, and it will be beyond the lens on the actual camera body (since the film is in the body)

it could be the diopter on the viewfinder that makes everything look blurry, but if all the lenses look fine and just that one looks off, it probably just that lens is not seated correctly or something wrong with the glass.

Ultimately, it ended up being a non-reflex lens on a reflex camera. Boo to that.