Fast Cheap Easy Rangefinder Fix

[rick oleson]

(thought that might get your attention)

I didn't know where to put this, but here it is: I just stumbled across a way to make an unusably dim rangefinder perfectly usable, essentially immediately and for free. I was on the road in a hotel room with a Weltini that I discovered had a fully deteriorated beamsplitter and could form a secondary image only if you wanted to photograph a light bulb, and I had nothing with me but my clothes, a couple of notebooks and some pens. Within 5 minutes the Weltini was perfectly usable in dim hotel-room light.

I'm not going to spill all the beans here: you can see the solution fully described at http://rick_oleson.tripod.com/index-165.html

If you've tried this before, let me know - I hadn't, and if I'm taking credit for something everybody else already does I'd like to know before I make a bigger fool of myself. If you HAVEN'T tried it before, and you have a camera with a bad rangefinder, give it a try - you'll be amazed!

rick : ) =

 

[back alley]

don't remember where but i have seen this before.

didn't leica make something like this for sale?

joe

 

[rick oleson]

Not that I've seen. They did make a dark filter to cover the primary rangefinder lens (I have one of those), but it darkened the entire field. This leaves the field bright but turns the coincidence rangefinder into a split-image type.

: ) =

 

[jlw]

What you're doing is basically turning a coincidence-image rangefinder into a Leningrad rangefinder!

On the Leningrad, the RF patch is NOT semi-transparent -- it shows only the secondary RF image. The only way you can focus is by finding vertical lines in the image and lining them up so they're "unsplit," as shown in Rick's picture.

It's very comfortable and precise with subjects that have well-defined vertical lines... but almost impossible for subjects that don't, such as faces, textures, etc.

Of course, the advantage of doing it Rick's way, as opposed to the Leningrad way, is that if you want to go back to coincident-image focusing, you can just peel off the tape!

 

[sychan]

Cool!

Cool!

Rick,
I just tried it on my Kiev, which has a clean RF, but is definitely a RF from the Dark Ages. Covering the whole RF spot was a little too much, but covering half of it left enough of an image in the main RF area for coincident image, in addition to lining up vertical edges.

I wonder if something that only blocked part of the light would be good? Maybe a peice of clear, but grey adhesive?

Steve

 

[kabkos]

The approach you are proposing is very similar to what the Koni Omega and Mamiya Press cameras use. If you look closely at the viewfinder window of one of these cameras, you will notice that the manufacturer put a dark gray spot where the rangefinder spot is. This increased the contrast at that point so that the cameras could be used in low light situations.

karl

 

[rick oleson]

The Sharpie pen version of it let me play with both the size and the darkness of the spot on the Weltini, and it also gave it sort of fuzzy edges that make it a little more pleasant than the tape version.

But either one is more pleasant than splitting a cemented prism, having the face resilvered, and cementing it back together again.

: ) =

 

[Wayne R. Scott]

Just wanted to say "You 'da man, Rick!"

I tried your fix on a Contax IIIa and a Fujica V-2. The difference is just amazing! And this fix was in my price range.

Thanks!

Wayne

 

[Solinar]

Another Happy Camper

Another Happy Camper

It seems that my Zorki 3 is also a happy camper after placing a miniscule patch of gaffers tape the size of the RF window on to the center of viewfinder glass.

 

[pshinkaw]

Rick:

I've been doing something like this for at least 20 years with my Leica IIIF by waving a finger in front of the primary viewfinder window to equalize the image brightness.

However, you deserve the credit since you figured out how to actually fix it on a camera. My subjects wondered why I kept waving a finger in front of the camera while I was shooting.

-Paul

 

[titrisol]

thanks rick! It worked in a Petri7s that I finished fixing this weeekend

 

[ikophot]

Hey,hey it works my Retina IIIs is much better now

 

[Fedzilla_Bob]

Sweet! I was wondering what to do for my Canon QL17 (1st version) rangefinder. I felt it was too dim.

I kept thinking make a yellow patch for the rangefinder. This is much simpler.

BTW- I dig the C-44! 😉

 

[Jeroen]

Though something else, I did remember this one: http://www.leicagoodies.com/shade.html

 

[Roman]

Just improved my XA!
Thanks!

Roman

 

[titrisol]

Nicola Douez suggested adding a piece of orange gelatin filter to the rangefinder window as a good alternative, by increasing the contrast... However, when the RF is dim David's solution works best

 

[parks5920]

Thanks Rick, I am going to try it out on my Auto S2!

 

[rbiemer]

Thanks for this idea, Rick!
My FED 5c has a round RF patch and there is a grey spot in spot in the viewfinder but it's not very distinct so I decided to put a round spot of black tape(I used the marker first and the improvement was great) on the front window. Well after several trys using my paper hole punch, I instead cut a tiny rectangle of tape and am using that on the bottom half of the round patch. So far it works VERY well!
American Science and Surplus sells a gray cello tape. See here It's probably enough tape in a single order for all of our RFs!
Rob

 

[cralx2000]

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=45184&is=REG

 

[stet]

American Science and Surplus sells a gray cello tape.

They have the best catalogs! Each item's entry is a little comical blurb. I want to meet the people who write them, or visit the warehouse.

I highly suggest going to that link and signing up for the print catalog. Every couple months you'll get the best bathroom book to thumb through. Um, I mean, for reading while you take a bath. Yeah.