Happily Ever After

Life in The Rural Retreat with a beautiful wife, three cats, garden wildlife, a camera, a computer – and increasing amounts about running

Earlier posts can be found on Adventures of a Lone Bass Player, where this blog began life. Recent entries can be found here.

The Budget Solution For Viewfinder Woes

by admin - 22:40 on 05 February 2014

Snappery can be an expensive hobby, so when something goes wrong its practitioners expect to pay lots of money to put it right. Lots being relative, of course.

Yesterday I called in at Ffordes in Beauly, a nationally renowned dealer which recently expanded from its upstairs premises into the downstairs where as well as a special room just for Leica enthusiasts there's cameras and lenses by the score. There must be gear worth many thousands of pounds within reach.

So it was no surprise that after examining my humble K100D's viewfinder I was told it would cost £60 to remedy (whether VAT was included wasn't made clear) and take around three weeks. A decent secondhand model can be found for £80.

Unhappy at the news (more by the length of time than the cost, to which I was resigned) I asked a Dingwall Camera Club colleague for an opinion. “Buy a new viewfinder glass on eBay,” he advised. “They're easy to fit.”

They're not, I was informed by online forums, or at least not in the K100D which would require lots of disassembly and possibly some soldering. But I was heartened to learn that scratched viewfinders are not uncommon – I'd thought I was the only cack-handed user – and that there's a cheap, simple and effective solution.

It's called Polywatch, costs £4, and is designed to smooth away scratches on wristwatch faces. Similar concoctions are available for removing scratches on vehicle trim. The endorsements were enthusiastic.

So my tube of Polywatch is in the post. Wish me luck – I might get to see a sharp and sparkling Malta through the viewfinder rather than a grey and blurred one. In the meantime, the Pentax is still functional, as illustrated by this snap of a jolly robin (displayed at the old size – I've decided that page-width pictures are too big unless I've something special to show off).

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