One focusing problem fixed; another crops up

[Dan Lazin]

I got my R-D1 back from DAG today -- I sent it in because of the miscalibrated rangefinder detailed in this thread -- and it now focuses accurately.

Well, sort of.

Here's the thing: before, the vertical RF alignment was spot-on. Images would come into coincidence and the RF patch would all but disappear. Unfortunately, that was no guarantee that the camera was actually focused correctly, so off to DAG it went. Now it focuses nicely, except the image in the RF patch is tilted.

I don't think this is a vertical alignment problem; it's not that the RF patch image is consistently high or low of the main finder image. Rather, the image inside the patch is tilted. The edges of the patch itself are square to the viewfinder, and my framelines are square too. Within the rectangular RF patch, however, the image is tilted a few degrees clockwise.

I called DAG and he was mystified. He says there's no adjustment for the angle of the RF-patch image, and nothing he adjusted should have made a difference there, but it was fine when I sent it in and it's not-so-fine now. He's offered to take a look at it, but I'm leaving the country soon and he admits that he's not sure what he'd be able to do. My camera is under Japanese warranty, so I can't easily send it in to Epson, and now that the *rest* of the focusing process works nicely, I don't want to give this camera up.

The problem isn't always obvious, but if I focus for example on the keyboard of my laptop, looking at it from the side, the rows of keys run vertically through the frame. In the RF patch, however, the row of keys is marching off at an angle to the top right, so that when I focus, the real key and the RF-image key are never properly superimposed. The letter H on the keyboard is square in the main image and tilted a few degrees in the RF patch, so I can never really tell when it's going to be sharp.

Before, the RF patch would become essentially clear when the camera (wrongly) thought it was in focus. No more.

The problem seems more severe at close distances, but I don't understand why that should be; it's not like the rangefinder rotates as you focus.

What should I do?

 

[pfogle]

Dan...

my r/f patch shows the same effect. As there seems to be no documented way to adjust this, I'm wondering if it could have been like that before you sent it in, but you didn't notice? Just a thought.

The one thing I've found with mine, which is slightly annoying, is that the moving image in the patch moves parallel to the patch itself, so that if the vertical alignment is correct at infinity, it's off at closest focus, and if you adust it for close focus, it's a bit off at infinity. I've had to adjust mine so the images line up at about 2m distance - fine for portraits, but a bit of a compromise for near or far focus. I just decided to live with it, as this is my fourth body, and I'm not going to let go of it!

cheers
Phil

 

[Dan Lazin]

Alas, this is definitely a new problem -- it used to be that when I, ahem, "focused," the rangefinder patch would get that nice clear look to it, and now it never does. When determining the original rangefinder adjustment was off, many of my test shots were of my keyboard, it being one of the most measurable subjects handy, and the angle of the key-rows matched then.

I've noticed the same thing as you with the vertical alignment/rangefinder skew changing with distance, Phil. (I suppose that's because something in our rangefinders is tilted; one problem begets the other.) Mine is much closer to acceptable at infinity, and I'm considering bringing it a little closer.

By the way, DAG said that while there was no obvious way to fix the problem, it might be possible to tilt a mirror or prism somewhere in the rangefinder as a response. He said, however, that such a solution would be very crude, so who knows if we'd end up with something better?

Since, like you, I don't want to let go of this camera, and since I need it for a big trip three weeks from now, I think I'll learn to live with it and then send it in on warranty when I get back. Hopefully Epson will still have some cameras sitting around then, or perhaps they'll have learned how to fix them.