Frame moving in the viewfinder!

[yoshimura]

I have been the happy owner of a R-D1s for the last eight months, relieved not to have experienced any of the rangefinder/viewfinder problems described all along this forum...until today. While shooting flowers with a CV 2.5/75 (it made beautiful pics by the way), I noticed that the small rangefinder rectangle was in the upper left corner of the viewfinder, instead of the usual and normal central position. A bit puzzled, I took a closer look and concluded that actually, it was not the rectangle which was moving, it was the frame...
Upon closer examination, I saw that actually the frame was perfectly located in its central position when the lens is sent on infinity, and moving diagonally towards the lower right angle of the viewfinder everytime the distance cam towards the close distance and vice versa, with all the lenses I tried afterwards. Rather weird, since the rangefinder proper continues to be perfectly aligned.
Has anybody experienced this before? Is there anything that could be tried to fix this problem?
I am eager to read your reactions!

 

[Gid]

What you describe is perfectly normal, so there is no fix to worry about.

 

[pfogle]

Yoshimura, as GID said, this is normal with this camera, unlike the Leica rangefinder.

The rangefinder patch is a small telescope that is fixed in relation to the outer frame. The framelines themselves are on a mask that moves as the lens is focused to compansate for parallex error. In the Leica rangefinder, the patch is attached to the frameline mask, and so stays apparently central as you focus.

It's a design feature of this camera that we just have to get used to!

 

[yoshimura]

OK, I now understand. As it was the first time that I noticed it and compared the R-D1's viewfinder with my good old M3's, I got lost. Besides, I couldn't find anything on this apparent movement in the instruction booklet...Thank you both, I will spend a good sunday thanks to you...