{"id":82,"date":"2009-03-01T01:47:09","date_gmt":"2009-03-01T01:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/?p=82"},"modified":"2011-02-23T10:40:19","modified_gmt":"2011-02-23T18:40:19","slug":"voigtlander-vitomatic-iia-rangefinder-repair-and-adjustment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/?p=82","title":{"rendered":"Voigtlander Vitomatic IIa rangefinder repair and adjustment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I acquired a Vitomatic IIa rangefinder camera with a non working viewfinder.\u00a0 I found the that the\u00a0problem was that a small lens used for creating the rangefinder image had come free\u00a0from its holder and was loose in the\u00a0mechanism.\u00a0\u00a0So in order to recover the lens and re-attach it it was necessary to disassemble\u00a0\u00a0most of the top plate.\u00a0 The meter had to be removed, which was easily done as one of the screws was also loose in the workings.\u00a0 Actually removing the viewfinder prism is a delicate operation and no force should be applied as the prism is optically cemented together.\u00a0<span class=\"frame-outer  aligncenter size-medium wp-image-83\"><span><span><span><span><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-83\" title=\"vitomatic_rangefinder2\" src=\"http:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/vitomatic_rangefinder2-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"vitomatic_rangefinder2\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/vitomatic_rangefinder2-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/vitomatic_rangefinder2-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/vitomatic_rangefinder2.jpg 1570w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/> <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>You can see in this image that the lens is missing from the frame on the left.<\/p>\n<p>Once the lens\u00a0was re-attached and the glue had time to set I re-assemble everything in reverse.\u00a0 (don&#8217;t forget the spring that tensions the rangefinder linkage)<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"frame-outer  aligncenter size-medium wp-image-84\"><span><span><span><span><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-84\" title=\"vitomatic_rangefinder\" src=\"http:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/vitomatic_rangefinder-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"vitomatic_rangefinder\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/vitomatic_rangefinder-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/vitomatic_rangefinder-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/vitomatic_rangefinder.jpg 1974w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>In this image you can see the location of the screws that need to be set for adjusting the rangefinder.\u00a0 Loosen the set screw,\u00a0 set the lens on infinity and adjust the slotted screw until an item in the far distance has both images in convergence.\u00a0 The vertical convergence can also be adjusted with the square screw just beside the light-meter linkage.\u00a0 A pair of tweezers works for this or a small pair of needle nose pliers.<\/p>\n<p>And now I have a working Voigtlander Vitomatic IIa,\u00a0 if only someone hadn&#8217;t scratched a flash setting reminder on the back of the top plate, sigh.<\/p>\n<p>Update:\u00a0 I have taken a roll of Kodak 200 with this camera and am very happy with the exposure and the quality of the lens.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"frame-outer  aligncenter size-large wp-image-89\"><span><span><span><span><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-89\" title=\"vitomatic2a_006\" src=\"http:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/vitomatic2a_006-1024x661.jpg\" alt=\"vitomatic2a_006\" width=\"415\" height=\"268\" srcset=\"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/vitomatic2a_006-1024x661.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/vitomatic2a_006-300x193.jpg 300w, https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/vitomatic2a_006.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I acquired a Vitomatic IIa rangefinder camera with a non working viewfinder.\u00a0 I found the that the\u00a0problem was that a small lens used for creating the rangefinder image had come free\u00a0from its holder and was loose in the\u00a0mechanism.\u00a0\u00a0So in order to recover the lens and re-attach it it was necessary to disassemble\u00a0\u00a0most of the top [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,6],"tags":[19,116,40],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cameras","category-photography","tag-camera","tag-repair","tag-voigtlander"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88,"href":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}