F5: Can't clean rear of glass SONY DVF-L350 viewfinder

Sparky874

Sparky874

Well-known member
Hi there. Using this VF on my Sony F5. Very annoying at the moment as the rear side of the glass you put your eye to is really smeared and I can't access it to clean. It makes looking through it really tough - although of course the images the camera records to are fine. I have had a look through the PDF manual for it, but can't find a way to get access to clean this glass. Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks, Sparky.
 
Not sure if I understand correctly. You must be talking about the inner side of the very last glass element (the element which is the closest to the eye), not the rear element of the entire optical block which you can access by taking the hood off or simply by flipping it out ? How did it get smeared anyway?
 
Exactly. Guess it just got smeared from working in the last few months in the Middle East, Singapore and India recently - countries with high humidity - lots of dust too in Saudi. There must be a way of 'getting to it'.
 
I remember reading something on Sony's F55 forum that said that piece was made of plastic and very prone to damage by even basic cleaning. Someone suggested putting a filter (52mm?) between the eyepiece and glass to add a protective layer.

In my own experience, we had to send swap a rental Sony LCD VF for the same reason. After a few weeks of exterior shooting in a mildly dusty, run'n'gun climate, the viewfinder was useless. Cleaning it with a lens tissue & solution was the equivalent to wet-sanding. Glass could've handled it, but plastic not so much.
 
Taylor,

that was myself and a gent named Paul Ream. My first shoot with my camera featured filming in a very sweaty concert, one of his first was (I seem to recall) in some kind of mine. He scratched his optic wiping away dust, I managed to scratch mine after an evening of frequent but none too vigourous de-fogging with a Selvyt. Then the next morning I manage to stove in the entire loupe assembly with another clean. It was held in by four dabs of adhesive from the LCD side and just went 'click'! My brand new pride and joy!

Fortunately by some fluke I was filming around the corner from Sony's engineering centre in Wales, took it along and an engineer had a look and agreed it shouldn't have happened. Took it home (it would be a replacement, not a repair), didn't try to fix it with glue (would have invalidated the warranty) and managed to get a replacement at no expense to me. It was the assembly failure that did it - just the scratches and I would have had to stump up, which Paul did. Two or three hundred quid as I recall.

It was whilst taking photos to email PrimeSupport that I noticed that under the rubber eyecup is a 52mm thread - same as the standard size for Nikon lenses. The thread sticks out, so the filter goes on the other way around to a lens, but a tenner's worth of scratch filter and I can be as vigourous as I like with the Selvyt, sweater sleeve, thumb etc. ;-)

That doesn't help the original poster's problem with the inside, though a well screwed on filter should reduce the muck and oil getting in - but I would advise anyone with an LCD viewfinder to fit a 52mm scratch filter. Easy path to peace of mind and on a two grand viewfinder with plastic optics not quite sure why something like that's not on there from the factory,

Ben
 
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