Rangefinder window oddity

[eyesage]

I recently acquired a Minolta Hi-Matic 9 which has given me some excellent results so far but focusing is unusually difficult. The image from the rangefinder window is mostly fuzzy and unusable except in the lower corner. A look at the window from the front makes it clear why - the opening for the rangefinder window doesn't match up with the clear spot on the frosted glass cover.





No clue how it got that way in the first place. My guess is someone had it apart and didn't put the glass in right, I'm not sure how the glass is even attached or if this is even correctable. I'll probably end up taking the top off once the roll of film that's in there now is done, but maybe someone has run into this before and has a clearer idea about how to go about this or how such a thing could have happened in the first place.

 

[John Koehrer]

It's shifted, maybe from being bumped.
I'm not familiar with the Minolta, but the Canon window slips into a frame and is held in place
with a dab of cement or nail polish. That's a very common method.

 

[eyesage]

Shifted or no it turns out there was no way to place the glass in the frame so that the window was in the right spot without trimming it and leaving a gap on one side. Even if I could positioning the clear spot over the rangefinder opening would have caused the frosted section to cut into the viewfinder frame, so either the part wasn't made right or it was intended for a different model. As the glass was etched there was no way to salvage it so I wound up cutting a replacement from a piece I had lying around intended for framing.