Careful laboratory tests performed for the U. S. Air Service showed that
neither low temperature nor low pressure, such as would be met at high
altitudes, alter the focus of any ordinary lens by a significant amount,
and that the possible contraction of the camera body was of negligible
effect on the focus (not more than 1/200 per cent. per degree centigrade
with a metal camera). In complete harmony with these tests has been the
experience that if the ground focussing is done carefully, by accurate
means, then the air focus is correct. The whole matter thus becomes one
of precision focussing.
The best method, applicable if the air is steady, is to focus by
_parallax_. The ground glass focussing screen is marked in the center
with a pencilled cross. Over this is mounted, with Canada balsam, a thin
microscope cover-glass. The camera is directed on an object a mile or
more away, and the image formed by the lens is examined by a magnifying
glass through the virtual hole formed by the affixed cover-glass. With
the pencil line in focus the head is moved from side to side. If the
image and pencil mark coincide they will move together as the head is
moved. If the image moves away from the pencil mark and in the _same_
direction as the eye moves, the image is too near the lens. If the image
moves away in the _opposite_ direction to the motion of the eye, it is
too far from the lens. In either case the focus is to be corrected
accordingly.
In place of a distant object, which may waver with the motion of the
air, we may use an image placed at infinity by optical means. The
_collimator_, an instrument for doing this, consists of a test object
(lines, circles, etc.) placed accurately at the focus of a telescope
objective. The camera lens is placed against this and focussed by
parallax, as with a distant object. Collimators are employed in camera
factories, and should be part of the equipment of base laboratories
where repairing and overhauling of cameras is done.
=Lens Mounts.=—All that is required for the mounting of an aerial camera
lens is a rigid platform, with provision for enough motion of the lens
to adjust its focus accurately. As already explained, the lens works at
fixed, infinity, focus, and therefore needs no adjustment during use. It
must be held far more rigidly than would be possible by the bellows,
which is an almost invariable adjunct of focussing cameras. The use of
ordinary types of hand cameras on a plane is rarely successful just
because of the bellows, which is strained and rattled by the rush of
wind.
The lens mountings thus far used have been simple affairs. In the French
cameras the lens is merely screwed into a flange which in turn is
fastened by screws to a platform in the camera body. Adjustment for
focussing is not provided; instead, the flange is raised on thin metal
rings or washers, cut of such thickness by trial as to bring the lens to
focus, once and for all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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