Repairing A Vintage Rangefinder, So You Don’t Have To!

Whilst I have no particular desire to acquire yet more camera gadgets (other than lens filters, I’d like some lens filters), Car Boots and Charity Shops present temptation that few of us are strong enough to resist. It's not as if I need another Rangefinder attachment, in fact I don’t really need the ones I’ve got, but at the very least the leather case that this example came with makes it a useful item, and all for just £1.50!

I say ‘useful’, even a cursory examination revealed that this bargain wasn’t in fact a worker, reason unknown. However, previous experience means that I now class myself as a competent repair man when it comes to these vintage Rangefinders and Viewfinders. They’re all basically the same design as far as I can tell, a very simple design utilising basic secondary school physics and the kind of rudimentary mechanics even I can understand. Easy to repair then, once you’ve managed to get into them, which is by far the biggest problem...

Most of these Rangefinder accessories were designed to be easily calibrated by the user, but they certainly weren't made to be disassembled for repair. In fact more often than not there appears to be no obvious way to access the optical innards. I know from my own and other peoples experience that to repair these things you often need to damage them a bit more first…

This British made Amplion Rangefinder is no exception. To reveal the screws that hold the device together you need to carefully peel back the cheap vinyl covering on the rear of the instrument (above), and even more carefully prise the distance scale off the rotating wheel (right), inevitably causing some damage in the process. This is where I made a slight mistake.

The rear plate is fixed to the main body by two screws, one hidden under the vinyl, the other similarly obscured by the wheel. There's also an additional screw in the middle which fixes the copper mirror assembly to the rear plate. This doesn't need to be removed, in fact you don't even need to peel the vinyl back to reveal it, though needless to say I did, at which point a small Ball Bearing dropped out and onto the floor...

The second screw is obscured by the wheel that functions as the distance scale. To remove the wheel requires the removal of the thin black disc, which you'll find is firmly glued to the wheel. I used a craft knife to prise it off, a tricky task which caused minor damage to the plate, but a necessary evil because you now need to (partially) unscrew the smaller screw that's now been revealed. This screw prevents the wheel from fully rotating in use (above), so once it’s been unscrewed a little you'll be able to fully rotate and remove the wheel, revealing the second screw that holds the plate in place (also above).

We now have access to the innards, which in this case appeared to be in good working order, albeit I'd now created extra work by unnecessarily removing the mirror mechanism from the back plate (above). So why wasn't the damn thing working?

Well in fact it was working, mechanically so at least. The problem was the Yellow Filter that sits over one of the glass 'windows' and helps to give contrast between the two images that you're aiming to line-up (right). This had darkened and bubbled up to the point that it was difficult to see through. Once I'd removed it (below) I found that I could see the two images perfectly well so decided it didn't really need replacing, although a yellow permanent marker pen would do the job adequately should I ever change my mind.

Reassembly of the device was simple enough in reverse, though it took some experimentation to work out that the Ball Bearing sits in a depression at the end of the mirror mechanism, and the calibration screw at the centre of the wheel sits on it (left). In fact if the calibration screw is completely removed, the bearing can be dropped down the centre of the wheel.

The most important aspect of reassembly is making sure the wheel is screwed down sufficiently to achieve the correct calibration before replacing the backstop screw. Also it's useful to know that the whole copper mirror assembly can be adjusted on its mounting screw to ensure the two images line up vertically. It's now a simple case of gluing the vinyl back in place, calibrating the Rangefinder to a point at infinity, and hoping it gives an accurate reading for shorter distances.

As a postscript, whilst the Rangefinder now works properly, I've found that the steel 'foot' is too chunky to fit onto the Cold Shoe of either the FED or Baldessa cameras [groan!]