Vito CLR gone for good? No way!
elekm said:
Supposedly, the one thing you need to be mindful of with the Vito CLR is the cemented prism that forms the secondary image. Supposedly, these are somewhat fragile, and once the semi-transparent coating has deteriorated, it's gone for good.
On my own CLR, the prism is in good shape, though the secondary image is a bit dim.
The beam splitter is always THE problem in rangefinders. Although we have never taken a peep inside a Vito CLR (Sorry Zhenya, we don't own one, only a Vito B that is only good for parts, as the lens is as dead as the last owner, viz. my dear father)..., but we've dealt with other rangefinders, especially of the folder type (Bessa, Welta, Telka etc.), and I'd be surprised if those rangefinder prisms would differ much from the Vito CLR.
ANYHOW, what I wanted to say:
1. replacement beam splitters are still available from a store in the USA (Edmund Optics), but rather on the expensive side.
2. we have invented a quick&dirty solution for beam splitter repair. It goes like this: Find a roll of self-adhevise semi-translucent material in a car shop. The kind you stick on windows so no-one can look in, but you can still look outside. These rolls come in different qualities, be picky, don't take just anyone. (We happen to use 'Car Point window film" - 10% silver.) Cut a piece from this roll of foil the size of your glass and stick it on the side that was previously silverized. If this is done, lay the glass piece one day in the sunshine. The glue of the foil hardens in UV-light. Afterwards remount it in the rangefinder. You will find you have regained the ghost image needed for focussing. We use it on quite a few rangefinder camera's, and it's a working solution.
And I wish I could repair my computers as easy as that!
Greetz, medform-norm
Note for Zhenya,
My dad's Vito B had a color-skopar. I recently looked at the slides he took when the camera was still new (and my mom wasn't even in the picture yet, literally!), and I was quite taken with the quality of the images. I don't know anything about enlarging, though. Someone else here will.
Oh boy, are you lucky to have a lab that can clean your shutters for free! Perhaps you can set up a small sub-business, cleaning shutters for all us vintage camera lovers.
BTW, we are selling our Vitessa at the moment (on a Dutch website). It's a model III N, with a color-skopar 3.5 in a synchro-compur shutter. Camera has been recently cleaned, all times work fine except maybe for the 1 sec, which is more like 1,2 secs - a bit too slow. Rangefinder is dead on, self timer works like new. If you're interested, mail me for pics.
, but I can't find any pictures taken with it on the net 
So, waht is your opinion about it? Is it a good choice to carry in a pocket to shoot some accidental good colour? 
