Oly SP Finder Flare - Experiences?

[planetjoe]

Hi, all.

I was recently reviewing a roll shot with my SP, and I found that a several of the more "available-light" images had out-of-focus subjects. Although I'm not immune to mis-focusing, there seemed too many to be simple error. At any rate, I started to look for signs of RF mis-alignment.

In short, I didn't find any (I must be that bad at pre-focusing), so I'm off to shoot a test roll. But while investigating I found signs of some significant flare in the SP's finder.

I'm indoors at the moment, in a lamp-lit room, and the bright light sources all "ghost" a few degrees to the left in the finder. So I guess it's not exactly flare, but rather internal specular reflections. The effect seems to be present in both the RF and VF optical paths, since the ghosts are present through each window even when the other is blocked.

I wonder if any other SP owners can confirm a similar effect with their camera(s). My finder doesn't look damaged, dirty, or mis-aligned, so it's rather strange. And I've never seen it before.

Now I'm beginning to wonder whether the ghost images might be fooling my eye with respect to RF patch alignment. That could be related to the previous "misfocus" problem. Have to look into that...

Thanks in advance.


Cheers,
--joe.

 

[planetjoe]

Not much feedback here. Eh; I get that a lot.

Just took the SP out today (if anyone's interested) and the ghosting isn't too prominent in the daylight. Still some issues in the shadows, though; I'd been wondering about that.

As an aside, it was a beautiful day at the beaches, no glare; the kind of day I wish I knew how to use a polarizer correctly...


Cheers,
--joe.

 

[planetjoe]

Good point, pitxu. It'd be quite a sight to see an RF/VF hood affixed to the front of my SP. Perhaps the purveyor of Leicagoodies will be watching this thread...

Painting the interior of RF assemblies flat-black is definitely a must-do, in my opinion. I recall disassembling my first Fed (there have been several) and being shocked to find that this wasn't the norm. Well, perhaps shocked is too strong a word. It was a refreshing change to disassemble old Polaroid 800s and 900s and find that their focusing assemblies were, indeed, painted to minimize internal reflections.

...which, it would appear, is what I've got - the images are being formed on the inside of the camera. Flare was indeed the wrong word for my syndrome; there seems to no way to block/shield the RF/VF windows from the outside in order to eliminate the ghosting effect. Perhaps it's simply a side-effect of the combined RF/VF design in these beauties; with magnification applied to both optical paths, there are a lot of surfaces for stray light to reflect. Leitz managed to accomplish it, though.

I'll have to continue my research, as it were. Again, thanks.


Cheers,
--joe.

 

[owenreading]

I observed this problem on an Olympus 35RD finder recently. It only appeared very occasionally, mainly with strong side-lighting, which I believe was forming ghost images on the half-silvered mirror.

Mind you, at least our little Olympus cameras don't cost us much. Think of the annoyance if you had a similar problem on, say, an M6 😀