The traditional Copal shutter was borderline too physically weak to hold the large 32HR front element in proper alignment. I say borderline because most people found it to be just fine, but some of the customers that we’ve seen need a repair are not the kind to be careless with their gear, which strongly implies that damage could occur due to shaking/shocks that fall well short of negligent. We began advising our 32HR clients to watch out for this potential issue (eg packing it with extra padding, not leaving it mounted when relocating a tripod, especially for long distances, etc) and have seen a steep decline in repairs since then.
This issue stood out to me mainly because the other medium format gear we sell are built like a rock (recall the phase one series where they elevated a truck on four digital backs, baked a back in the oven, and froze an back in dry ice; no issues) and don’t really need to be babied, and the 32HR on a Copal shutter seems to be an exception to that requiring more precaution in use and travel.
As mentioned in our article (
https://www.dtcommercialphoto.com/t...ve-the-king-the-end-of-the-copal-shutter-era/) Rodenstock considered this factor in designing the new Rodenstock Aperture Only Mount and designed it to be significantly more robust than a Copal shutter in this regard.
