TT artisan viewfinder for Mamiya press with 75mm lens

[Neil Grant]

…I find the OEM bright line viewfinder rather poor with indistinct frames. Do you think I could use a TT art. vf designed for 35mm lens instead? I looks nice and is inexpensive. I’m really asking is the viewfinder for full-frame or apsc? I have a Voigtlander 21mm for the Press 50mm lens and it works well but this brand is too expensive in 35mm or 40mm field-of-view. Thanks if you can help.

 

[abruzzi]

I use a TTArtisan 28mm viewfinder for the 65mm lens on my Fuji GL690. The "28mm" on the TTArtisan indicates the focal length for 35mm/FullFrame. I assume one marked for "35mm" focal length to also be FF. Note--the 28mm doesn't have frame lines at all, I assume the one you're looking at to be the same?

 

[Neil Grant]

..thanks. The TT art 35mm viewfinder is a bright-line type. So, different from your 28mm. Hopefully it‘s marked out for full-frame.

 

[Neil Grant]

I use a TTArtisan 28mm viewfinder for the 65mm lens on my Fuji GL690. The "28mm" on the TTArtisan indicates the focal length for 35mm/FullFrame. I assume one marked for "35mm" focal length to also be FF. Note--the 28mm doesn't have frame lines at all, I assume the one you're looking at to be the same?

OK, I have the TTA 35mm viewfinder now and it seems to indicate framing for full-frame. So that's fine. The bright lines are not as clear as the Voigtlander but it's more useable than Mamiya's dedicated v/f and less distorted too. Thanks for the advice.

 

[thinkbrown]

This isn't strictly an answer but I disassembled my press viewfinder and cleaned the elements which improved the visibility of the bright lines a fair bit. It's still not spectacular but it was a noticable improvement.

I'd do a couple tests to make sure the parallax error isn't going to cause you too much issue. The viewfinder gets mounted pretty far away from the lens on a press.

 

[Neil Grant]

This isn't strictly an answer but I disassembled my press viewfinder and cleaned the elements which improved the visibility of the bright lines a fair bit. It's still not spectacular but it was a noticable improvement.

I'd do a couple tests to make sure the parallax error isn't going to cause you too much issue. The viewfinder gets mounted pretty far away from the lens on a press.

..thanks for the cleaning suggestion. The viewfinder on my Press is hazy and could do with improvement. How far did you go? Just the eyepiece lenses or further into the rangefinder assy?

 

[thinkbrown]

..thanks for the cleaning suggestion. The viewfinder on my Press is hazy and could do with improvement. How far did you go? Just the eyepiece lenses or further into the rangefinder assy?

I didn't do anything with the rangefinder built into the body, I meant the cold shoe rangefinder that goes with the 75mm. That was basically just removing a retaining ring on the front and then cleaning the elements that popped out.

 

[Shaps]

I’m using a Mamiya Press 23 65mm viewfinder on my 6x9 camera with a 65mm Super Angulon f/8 lens. I tried small viewfinders made for 35mm cMeras with 28mm lens but the cheap ones were no good and the better ones( Voightlander, Leica) too expensive.

 

[rulnacco]

..thanks for the cleaning suggestion. The viewfinder on my Press is hazy and could do with improvement. How far did you go? Just the eyepiece lenses or further into the rangefinder assy?

You can find pretty good, detailed directions--along with some very useful cautions--in this video: . I'm going to try this myself before too long on my Universal.