A Fix For Albada Viewfinder

guangong · Sep 26, 2023

I recently acquired a Super Ikonta A 531 in as close to mint condition as possible
In perfect working condition with coated 75mm Tessar lens, except.....Except for the
Albada finder, where the bright lines have completely vanished.
I am considering making a mask out of black gaffer tape of black photographers tape that
would show the same field as the 6x4.5 negative. Then attaching mask to front lens of Albada finder.
If this would work, should mask be on inside or outside surface of lens?
While original finder showed scene outside of frame lines, I’ll be satisfied with just having
a finder that matches negative, or even a little less. (I don’t want to shoot a scene that won’t
appear on negative.)
Any advice on dimensions of mask for this camera would be helpful.
Any ideas about another better or more practical solution are certainly welcome.

Dan Daniel · Sep 26, 2023

Have you checked the actual negative against the finder without lines? I had one of these finders heavily tarnished so I soaked it in acetone and removed all the silvering. Turns out that the full viewifinder, no lines, worked fine. Like 35mm SLRs often had framing too tight for either slide mounts or processing printers to crop edges anyway.

John Wiegerink · Sep 26, 2023

guangong said:
I recently acquired a Super Ikonta A 531 in as close to mint condition as possible
In perfect working condition with coated 75mm Tessar lens, except.....Except for the
Albada finder, where the bright lines have completely vanished.
I am considering making a mask out of black gaffer tape of black photographers tape that
would show the same field as the 6x4.5 negative. Then attaching mask to front lens of Albada finder.
If this would work, should mask be on inside or outside surface of lens?
While original finder showed scene outside of frame lines, I’ll be satisfied with just having
a finder that matches negative, or even a little less. (I don’t want to shoot a scene that won’t
appear on negative.)
Any advice on dimensions of mask for this camera would be helpful.
Any ideas about another better or more practical solution are certainly welcome.

My "A" and "C" are the same way, mint, but I cleared the finder. Dan is right, but for 20' and closer I always include just a little more in the frame than I actually need. For infinity I usually don't and just shoot for what's in the finder. Works for me that way.
With my collectable cameras I sometimes get just too anal and want everything to look perfect and work perfect, which is just not possible sometimes. There is just no way I know of to re-silver a finder like the 531 has, but if there were I probably would pay at least the value of my camera to get it done. Will it make better quality photos after being re-silvered? NO! am I anal? YES!

John Wiegerink · Sep 26, 2023

John Wiegerink said:
My "A" and "C" are the same way, mint, but I cleared the finder. Dan is right, but for 20' and closer I always include just a little more in the frame than I actually need. For infinity I usually don't and just shoot for what's in the finder. Works for me that way.
With my collectable cameras I sometimes get just too anal and want everything to look perfect and work perfect, which is just not possible sometimes. There is just no way I know of to re-silver a finder like the 531 has, but if there were I probably would pay at least the value of my camera to get it done. Will it make better quality photos after being re-silvered? NO! am I anal? YES!

Actually, I'm doing just the opposite of what I'm saying at closer range, but I think you get my drift.

_T_ · Sep 26, 2023

I can't help with your particular camera, but on large format cameras it's a fairly simple matter to create easily visible guides on the ground side of the ground glass screen with a plastic ruler and a graphite pencil. Much preferable to a big gooey piece of tape inside your camera. You would want to wear gloves when you do this because your hand oils will show on the ground glass if you touch it.

John Wiegerink · Sep 26, 2023

_T_ said:
I can't help with your particular camera, but on large format cameras it's a fairly simple matter to create easily visible guides on the ground side of the ground glass screen with a plastic ruler and a graphite pencil. Much preferable to a big gooey piece of tape inside your camera. You would want to wear gloves when you do this because your hand oils will show on the ground glass if you touch it.

Yes, that is an easy or fairly easy thing to do on a 4X5 ground glass, but we're talking a very small and not coarse glass working area. If it were fairly easy I would have already have attempted it. I just gave up and use the cameras as is.

pbromaghin · Sep 27, 2023

guangong said:
I am considering making a mask out of black gaffer tape of black photographers tape that
would show the same field as the 6x4.5 negative. Then attaching mask to front lens of Albada finder.

I don't know that I would bother. A couple years ago I did some tests shots of a large rectangular mural exactly matching the 531's albada finder and they showed that it was wildly inaccurate. Like John Wiegerink, I just gave up. After all, they were made to be tourist cameras for photographing the kids in front of a mountain - not exactly precision devices.

You may be just as well off creating your own rectangle on a blank wall matching the 4x3 scale and burning a roll to find out where it sits in the blank finder. After thinking a little more about it, maybe a few rectangles within rectangles would work even better.

henryvk · Sep 27, 2023

pbromaghin said:
After all, they were made to be tourist cameras for photographing the kids in front of a mountain - not exactly precision devices.

Not this one, though. The 531A with Tessar would have been the top of the line:

https://www.pacificrimcamera.com/rl/02017/02017.pdf

This brochure must be from the mid to late 30s because it mentions the Zeiss Tessar design being 35-years-old.

In, say, 1937, US$ 110 for the 531A would have been 15% of the median annual income. A Kodak Brownie would have only cost a few dollars.

guangong · Sep 27, 2023

pbromaghin said:
I don't know that I would bother. A couple years ago I did some tests shots of a large rectangular mural exactly matching the 531's albada finder and they showed that it was wildly inaccurate. Like John Wiegerink, I just gave up. After all, they were made to be tourist cameras for photographing the kids in front of a mountain - not exactly precision devices.

You may be just as well off creating your own rectangle on a blank wall matching the 4x3 scale and burning a roll to find out where it sits in the blank finder. After thinking a little more about it, maybe a few rectangles within rectangles would work even better.

That is what I have done. As a temporary test made a frame using small strips of painters tape and the frame of my Fuji 6x4.5 camera.
On the contrary, the Super Ikonta were well engineered, refined, robust cameras, well advanced at the time.

snusmumriken · Sep 28, 2023

What a lovely camera to have in such condition. Enjoy!

A Fix For Albada Viewfinder

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