Nikon F Standard Prism/DE-1 repair

[stupid leica]

Hello RFF-

I just recieved my Black/standard F from KEH, and overall i am quite in love, except for one issue- there is some separation in the eyepiece. The actual prism is perfect, as is the mirror and the camera body is pretty good overall, for a BGN black F <$350 (IMO).

I have the type 4 finder, which has the big plastic eyepiece on the back, not the smaller rectangular one.

I was wondering if i could find a donor finder, maybe with a screwed up prism, and swap the parts?
Maybe somebody here has one?

Or maybe somebody here just has a DE1 they could send my way for a good price? 🙂

Thanks

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Not a chance on my Black DE-1!

I've swapped eyepieces before on the FTn prism, was not hard. Been a long time. I think the leatherette comes off and reveals the screws. I would look for a non-working FTn finder, Tn, or "T", they are cheap. Nikon "tended" to re-use parts like that. The rectangular style eye-level prism is much like the original Bulls-eye meter, and looks interchangeable.

 

[stupid leica]

oh man, thanks! That is exactly what i was hoping to hear, but thought i wouldn't.

I am sure i can get a donor finder cheap, and might already.

 

[stupid leica]

TWoK, give me that prism you got last night, you know you don't want it.

 

[Bill58]

If it were me, I'd ship the finder off to Sover Wong (soverf2repair@yahoo.com) for repair or buy a replacement from him. His work is impeccable.

 

[stupid leica]

Could Sover or somebody clean up/reglue the eyepiece glass in my prism, making it good again (for a nice price)?

 

[Sonnar Brian]

How bad is the separation? It should be possible to clean and re-cement the glass. It might be cheaper to find a parts finder and exchange the glass. The eyepiece glass is not glued to the prism, just comes out of the fixture.

 

[stupid leica]

about half the surface between the eyepiece elements is separated, so it looks pretty gross. I am looking for a parts finder, but it seems a lot of the FT finders and stuff on ebay, even with dead meters, are going for more than i feel like paying (for parts).

Can i use the eyepiece out of an F2's (metered) finder?

 

[stupid leica]

OK, i just got a $98 silver Prism off the bay, looks like the eyepiece is good on it... i will swap the eyepieces and paint it black to have a BEAT down standard prism.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

As long as you are going to have the glass out: I have "cheese-wiz" repaired separated elements in a Canon 135/3.5 using the index matching oil used for "oil immersion lenses" for microscopes. Cleaned off the old balsam using 99% isopropyl alcohol , put in a drop of the oil to prevent Newton's rings, re-assembled everything. The surface tension between the closely matched surfaces and retaining ring have kept it useful for 6 years now.

 

[stupid leica]

my donor prism came in yesterday, and was in better shape than i thought.

After a little bit of fiddling around with my screwdrivers, i had the leather off, removed the 4 screws holding the cover onto the prism, and then pulled the eyepiece. Success!
I also took a black sharpie marker to the parts of the mirror that were desilvered slightly, which now has a much cleaner image. Also, i tightened the "fingers" holding the prism down, so it no longer rattles. Now i think i will possibly paint this silver prism cover black, and put some new leather on it...

i am also going to try your method above for repairing the eyepiece.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Sounds good, glad it worked out. If you can get the glass separated and the balsam claned off, the "cheeze-Wiz" fix worked beautifully on my Canon lens.

 

[stupid leica]

My fixed up F. I loved shooting with it last night. This is my new favorite film camera.

 

[sanmich]

regarding the "prism canibalism" described here, I woul dlike to ask:

If there is an optical problem with a DE1 prism, can the optics be replaced by the ones from a cheaper donor, and from a Nikon Ftn (for the F) metered prism in particular.

Thanks

 

[sevo]

If there is an optical problem with a DE1 prism, can the optics be replaced by the ones from a cheaper donor, and from a Nikon Ftn (for the F) metered prism in particular.

Unlikely. My F plain finder's prism at least could not be replaced with a FTn prism (the rear end is too wide to fit inside the cover). However the prism from an early externally metering "flag" finder did fit. And going by most sources the DE-1 is the same as the last round eye piece plain F prism finder, with a name plate rather than the engraving, so I'd expect similar issues - if any, the prism will have evolved too far and might not even fit a flag prism any more...

But YMMV - Nikon went though more than a dozen metered finder variations and not that much less plain ones, there might me some extra constraints when it comes to mixing and matching parts between one and the other. Nikon never documented whether a part is cross-model compatible - like most camera makers they did not share part numbers across models/modules even if the parts were identical, but rather printed a (sometimes long) list of applicable numbers on the bag tag.

 

[NormanV]

What I did was to buy a non-working Photomic finder and strip it of the electrics. I then cut the chassis down to the minimun needed to hold the prism with a Dremel and then made a new top cover. It may not look as smart as the original but it only cost me £20 compared with £120.

 

[normclarke]

F prisms

F prisms

I had some success in replacing the prism on a 'beater' F with one from a Chinon. It did need to be positioned about 2mm higher as the Nikon item is about that much thicker. The resultant finder is A1 and cures the problems that these early finders suffer from. Separated lenses are easily re-cemented using an optical adhesive obtainable from specialist stockists.

Best,

normclarke.

 

[dufffader]

Great I dug up this old-ish thread. About to embark on my own prism-replacement operation, and while I'm at it, perhaps to revive my electrical engineering background and have a look at how I can revive an early F Photomic finder's external meter...