Minolta X cameras - are the prisms all the same?

beemermark

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I have two Minolta XE/XE-1/XE-7 that work find but the prisms are toast. Minolta used foam on the front bottom edge which turns to goo. You can remove the goo but the prism still shows the mess. I assume some of the silver has flaked off. looking for a cheap donor with a good prism but not sure if they are all the same.
 
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xkaes

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You're best bet is to find a dead XE-5 or XEb. I can't imagine any other cameras using the same prism.
 

neilt3

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I've had a couple of prisms where the silvering has been damaged due to decomposed foam .
This left a big distracting black mark in the viewfinder .
The last one I cleaned up was an unmetered prism for a Bronica ETRSi , bought for next to nothing .
Where the silver was missing I used a silver , oil based marker pen to colour it in , rather than look at a black mark .
Without the black mark , it's perfectly useable , showing a full image of the focus screen .
The effected part just lacks a bit of brightness and contrast etc , but still perfectly useable .
Example of a suitable pen ; ebay , silver pen link

I'm not sure how effective this would be on a 135 SLR as the prism is much smaller , on the MF prism , the damaged area was probably a smaller percentage of damage , but wort trying first .
 
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