ad to use a router to counter sink the mount into the wood a little bit in order to fine tune the distance from the lens to the film plane, one pass (very tiny shave cut) at a time, and then re-test the focus in between each pass, until the depth was perfect. Testing was easy at this point, I taped a piece of white paper to the film plane, held the lens to the front of the camera, held the camera an exact distance from a subject, set the distance meter on the lens to match the distance to the subject, and looked to see if the image was focused on the film plane. By the way, the "exact distance from the subject" is measured from the aperture ring (blades) of the lens, not the front of the glass or the film plane of the camera.
When I got mine right, the distance meter on the lens was incredibly accurate, accurate to within an inch at 15 feet, and a half inch at 2 feet. And since I will be shooting at f/16 most of the time, there will be enough depth of field that I will only have to use a tape measure for close ups, anything more than 10-15 feet away and I can ball park it. You have to remember, there is no "through the lens" view finder, no fancy prisms, and and no trap-door mirrors that can flip out of the way in fractions of a second. This is old school, you measure (or guess) the distance to the subject you want in focus, and you use the distance meter on the lens to focus. You don't get to "see" that your shot is in focus, you just know that it is because you can trust the distance meter. Now all you have to worry about is exposure, as in shutter speed. On that note...
Notes on Shutter Speeds:
If you know anything about cameras at all, you probably looked at the shutter design and asked yourself something along the lines of "How on earth can anyone open and close that shutter curtain fast enough with their hand to take a picture?" Well, that's a darn good question actually, and I'll be honest, it's not possible with the current design to take a shot in full sunlight unless you're going to add a filter as dark as welding goggles on the front of the lens. However, like I stated in the overview, it is possible, and quite easy in low light actually. You DEFINITELY want to use a tripod, it's a given. Now, with all that said, let's talk reality here so you know what to expect and how to figure out the shutter speed you'll need in order to take quality, colorful, contrasty photos.
I was able to determine how fast I could comfortably open and close the shutter curtain by simply operating the shutter in front of my computer while recording. You can just use my results as a guide, or if you're so inclined, you can do this test yourself. Any audio program that let's you record a wave file and look at the visual representation of the wave file will work. You just start recording and operate the shutter once or twice in front of the mic. The click sound that the piece of wood makes as it hits the top and bottom of the camera will show as pretty sharp spikes on the wave file.
When I did my test, the distance or "time span" from open to close was a remarkable, blazing speed of 3/10 of a second. Remarkable and blazing both being sarcasm, as this is remarkably slow compared to fixed speed of even the cheapest disposable camera. Cameras don't have a direct translation for 3/10 of a second, the closest translation would be 1/3 of a second, which is certainly close enough for film.
I don't own a light meter, at least not a reliable one, so here's how I figure out my shutter speeds. I bring along a somewhat modern SLR camera that supports Aperture Priority mode, I set the aperture to f/16 and compose my shot, press the shutter button half way and look at what the camera says it is going to use for a shutter speed if I press the rest of the way. If the speed (reading) is much faster than 1/3 of a second, I know that a shot is not possible. I make a point of only only trying to take photos in places where there is low light, in most cases I get readings of a full second or more, which are super easy to do. Film has a lot of latitude, which