Getting at the Mamiya 645 Pro ground glass for cleaning

[Ulophot]

Those of you with the camera know that the GG is covered with a clear glass. I have some spots on the underside of this or the top of the GG that I would like to clean. I am not someone who can pull things apart breezily and get them back together easily. I see various screws on the top after removing the eye-level finder and would like to know if I can remove four or six (or more) of them to get at the surfaces I need to without potentially leading to difficulties, as in, other parts spilling out, wires disconnecting (not that I have the AE finder, but I see the contacts for it), etc. A photo with arrows would be very helpful.

If it's something I should forget about until I have the camera serviced next time, OK, though the spots in the view are a bother, and it would seem to me that access wouldn't require a trained technician. I know the Super or one of the others, like some 35mm SLRs, allows dropping thefront edge of the GG tray into the box area and lifting the screen out of the tray. This appears to be designed differently.

 

[Axelwik]

I keep mine dirty. The dust spots help me focus a bit faster.

 

[Dustin McAmera]

You can remove the screen in the Pro. I know I replaced the prism screen with a grid one when I first got my camera, but I didn't remember how. This youtube vid shows it.



The kit he has at the start says Super, but the camera he does it with is a Pro. It's only half a minute long. There's a little lever in the twelve o'clock position of the lens-mount which releases the cradle the screen sits in to hinge down. You'll need suitable tweezers to hold it with.
My experience of doing jobs like this is that when I finish, the cleaned item has different dirt, not less of it. I think I must be Pigpen out of the Peanuts cartoon.

 

[Ulophot]

Thank you very much. I had actually watched that video yesterday but not looked carefully enough, either to see the "Pro" on the camera or at the release button on mine to see that it was something other than an immovable rivet. I did mention that I'm not good at this. To complete the picture, after cleaning and replacing it once, I replaced it upside down after a second cleaning and scarred the fresnel in trying to push it back into place. That's why there is now a Wanted to Buy post for one in the Classifieds.

Onwards.