Olympus 35SP Rangefinder Patch Problem

[Apjcphoto]

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]

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]

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]

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!

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]

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.