Cold Shoe Shuffle - Accessorising For Pleasure & Profit

FED-1 Camera with Gnome Rangefinder accessory fitted to the Cold Shoe

You know that thing with a new purchase where you check the online reviews, discuss it with experts in the field, run it past your family and friends, leave nothing to chance. Of course you do, but by now you’re so loved-up about the thing it makes total sense to filter out the negative reviews, ignore the sensible advice, throw caution to the wind and just buy the damn thing. Because, well it’s me, I’m different, those big issues are what other people have, it’ll be different for me…

Vintage cameras are not, by definition ‘new’. They’ve lived a life, often suffered neglect. They have wear, faults, damage, Mould! They come with... baggage, and they will absolutely screw your life up if you let them. In the case of vintage Soviet-era Leica clones like mine, they will, absolutely, 100%, definitely scratch the lenses of your designer glasses. You know this, you’ve read all about it, it’s a widely known and oft' reported issue, but of course you know better...

I knew better. Top tip: You absolutely don’t know better! The lens-destroying culprits can be seem here (right), attractively cast eyepieces which are as sharp as a Parmesan grater. Being very small, you absolutely have to get your eye right up to the glass to focus and frame your shots accurately, and therein lies the problem, your glasses will be scratched as a result. My current workaround involves the liberal application of masking tape, which works but it's not exactly an elegant solution. Other options include a wide variety of potentially expensive vintage Viewfinder and Rangefinder accessories, which is much more fun, and it's what your Cold Shoe was made for.

Fashion enthusiasts are already well acquainted with the fun to be had from 'Accessorising', and I see no reason why camera enthusiasts shouldn't grab a piece of the accessory action. They'll also be well acquainted with how easy it is to get carried away with the expense of it, but fun can still be maintained by sticking rigidly to a budget.

This Meopta 24x36 Viewfinder (left) for example was just £15, and a lovely thing it is with clear optics and a cool looking knurled dial for parallax adjustment. Unfortunately it's designed to sit on the side of a Twin Lens Reflex camera, not a compact 35mm. It gets in the way of the Rangefinder on this camera and wobbles a bit in the Cold Shoe. More crucially it interferes with the working of the shutter speed dial, as indicated by the red arrow, which in turn interferes with the shutter. It could be raised a little with an adapter, but that makes it even more wobbly so whilst it remains a nice thing, it's sadly not the Viewfinder I'm looking for.

I figured if I was going to attach a separate Viewfinder to the camera, it might as well be a Rangefinder too, that way I'd be able to take both damaging eyepieces out of the equation. So what exactly is a Rangefinder, and how does it work.

A Rangefinder is an optical device for determining the distance to a subject, in this case the subject is something we'd like to photograph. Some cameras, such as this FED-1, have a built in Rangefinder that's mechanically coupled to the lens, that way when the Rangefinder is set to the correct distance, the lens will also be focussed at the correct distance.

To achieve this the Rangefinder has two lenses set a few inches apart, one delivering the view straight to the eyepiece, the other is bounced down the length of the instrument via mirrors and superimposed over the other. If these images appear out of sync (above) the Rangefinder is set to the wrong distance. A dial on the device can then be used to adjust the angle of one of the mirrors until both images line-up (left), at which point the dial will indicate the correct distance to the subject. If the Rangefinder device isn't coupled to the lens, this figure can then be used to set the focus on the camera lens. A bit fiddly yes, but before the advent of SLR cameras this was pretty much how everyone achieved good focus on their camera.

Rangefinders come in many varieties, though they all work in much the same way. This German made Prazisa Rangefinder (above) not only looks the part on the FED, but works well and sits clear of the shutter speed dial, so all good then. Well sadly not because whilst the camera lens is marked up for distances in metres, the Rangefinder is calibrated for feet. I could of course re-calibrate it for metres, and may well do at some point...

The Rangefinder shown on the camera at the top of this post was manufactured by the UK based Gnome company, better known for their enlargers. It's calibrated in metres, and looks a bit more space-age in brushed aluminium, but sadly it arrived with something rattling inside and zero Rangefinding capability. To the credit of the seller I received an immediate refund and was encouraged to keep the useless device. I like a challenge so dismantle it and managed to re-attach both of the mirrors (right), a fiddly job that had the bonus of revealing how these things actually work. Whilst the Gnome now works, and I even managed to calibrate it properly, the image is somewhat off-centre and even more difficult to use than the one on the camera, so...

On balance, and having tried these two accessories out for size, I think I'll end up sticking with the onboard Rangefinder for now. I'd still like a Viewfinder though, and they don't come any simpler than this Kodak Sports Finder, a marvel of glass-free folding German technology designed for their popular Retina range of cameras. This version is designed for (I think) 50mm and 80mm lenses, possibly also a 35mm lens depending on which of the rotating masks are selected. The 'eyepiece' part also slides up and down for parallax correction, and the whole thing sits clear of the shutter dial. Brilliant!

Inevitably there are issues, not least of which is the way it turns a compact camera into a camera with an array of aerial-like attachments projecting from the top. The arrangement of masks shown below is the likely one for a 50mm lens, hardly a neat arrangement and I feel it would only be a matter of time before I broke something. The biggest issue though is that this device is designed to fit on a Cold Shoe that's significantly offset to the left, as is the case with the Retina range of cameras. The FED-1 Cold Shoe is central which means this Viewfinder sits to the right of the lens, not a huge problem for landscape photography, but the view becomes increasingly inaccurate the closer to the subject we get. I like this a lot and may give it a spin at some point, meanwhile another extremely inexpensive Viewfinder has caught my eye, more of which when I've got round to repairing it...