Olympus 35SP Rangefinder Patch Problem

Apjcphoto · Jul 16, 2015

Hi everyone. I'm wondering if people would have any recommendations on how to deal with fixing a barely visible Rangefinder patch in the viewfinder of my Olympus 35SP? Makes it impossible to focus as I can't guess ranges to save my life!

The patch is just a very faint yellow glow with no discernible edges or overlapping images. The photo below was taken with an iPhone and the yellow bumped a bit to kind of illustrate what I see.

Suggestions?
Thank you.

Adrian.

Michael W · Jul 16, 2015

I recall a camera repair guy telling me this is due to the rangefinder mirror becoming tarnished. The risk with trying to clean the mirror is that it's easy to wipe the coating off.

OptiKen · Jul 16, 2015

cut a small circle of black tape and stick it over the patch (center) of the outside window on the finder.
Or you could do like I do and touch a small dot the size of the patch on the outside of the finder window with a marker.
It works

Apjcphoto · Jul 17, 2015

Michael W said:
I recall a camera repair guy telling me this is due to the rangefinder mirror becoming tarnished. The risk with trying to clean the mirror is that it's easy to wipe the coating off.

I'm not going to lie to you Michael that sounds a little scary to me. Id love to have the know how that many here seem to to repair it myself but I'd be only 'having a bash' at it. Not really the kind of thing I'd like to do to it!

OptiKen said:
cut a small circle of black tape and stick it over the patch (center) of the outside window on the finder.
Or you could do like I do and touch a small dot the size of the patch on the outside of the finder window with a marker.
It works

I'll give that a shot Ken. Would I be right in thinking this is really just to fool your eye into thinking there's more contrast there where the patch appears in the view finder?

02Pilot · Jul 17, 2015

The black tape trick works by providing a higher contrast background for the RF patch. I prefer to use a black mark made with a Sharpie or similar permanent marker, as you can vary the opacity of the dot to your preference.

Olympus 35SP Rangefinder Patch Problem

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