Sorry to read about your disappointment with the Belar lens, Paul. I wish you the best of luck with the enlarger. Line up these two lines by rotating the bellows control knob and the negative is properly focused. Have you noticed the semi-automatic rangefinder system? Pulling the negative carrier part way out, two lines are projected on the easel. If free from dust and old-age milkiness, the Meopta lenses are quite satisfactory, but if you go for really large prints, a higher-class lens is advisable. One solution is to make new lens boards from heavy duty PC board for your other lenses. The early Meopta lenses had a native thread of 23.5mm, not 25mm, so third party lenses will not readily fit. The manual will answer your question about flipping the lens board for different focal lengths (on page 6-7), but apparently you already have figured that out. The manual for it appears to be downloadable from several Internet sites (for money), but the 'III' doesn't seem to be much different from the 'Opemus 5' model (the upper lamphouse just is a different shape), and the manual for this slightly younger model can be downloaded for free from To answer your last question first: the Opemus III model was produced between 19 (see ).
