Viewfinder line ghosting/reflections

[Ray]

Hi, i'm new to this forum and purchased an RD-1 2 weeks ago. This forum has been a great deal of help to me so far and I really love this camera.

For the last 2 weeks I have been using the RD-1 daily and never noticed a ghosting or a reflection of framlines outside the left set of 28mm framelines until today. Is this normal should I be able to see this reflection or has something gotten misaligned in my viewfinder. I also use a Leica M7 and MP and have never noticed this before. The ghosting is noticeable if I place my eye close to the viewfinder and I am looking towards the left side it shows up as an extra vertical line left of the 28mm left side framelines. I can see it with the 35mm frameline selected but it is not as prominent and is almost completely gone when I select the 50mm framelines. Thank you in advance for your help.

Ray

 

[jlw]

I don't think it's anything that suddenly has gone wrong with your camera. I'm guessing that this line was there in your R-D 1 all along, and either you just didn't notice it until now or just now encountered viewing and/or lighting conditions that made it more prominent.

I can see the line in my R-D 1 if I make an effort to look for it, by putting my eye 'way off to the right side of the finder and looking in toward the left at a distinct angle. Use enough of an angle and you can see it with all three framelines. The Bessa R3a (on which the R-D 1 is based) also has a similar reflection of its 40mm frameline, so I assume this is just a quirk of this particular rangefinder design.

If you experiment by blocking parts of the frosted frameline-illuminating window with your finger, you'll find that what you're seeing is the left vertical section of frameline.

If you look into the viewfinder window from the front, you'll see that there is a rectangular concave lens perpendicular to the front window; I can't be sure, but it looks as if the vertical slice of frameline is getting refracted by the edge of this lens, so it appears just outside the normal field of view.

The design of the RF optics on the R-D 1 and Bessa is completely different from that of a Leica M (which is larger, allowing more room for baffling, and also considerably more complex and expensive) which explains why you don't see this on your Leicas.

So, I'd say it's maybe an annoyance, but nothing to worry about. If you keep your eye centered behind the eyepiece, it shouldn't be a big problem. As I said, I only see it if I make an effort to look for it.