I have a working FED 5C that I like to use, however, I did discover that the viewfinder framelines do not match what's in the actual frame. I used ground glass on the film plane to compare the field of view and the framelines are offset to the left. I realised that you can effectively adjust them to the right by tilting the whole of the viewfinder glas but unfortunately this throws the rangefinder out of alignment and makes it impossible to properly calibrate it since the images will not match up.
Is there a way to make these framelines work or should I just forget about them? I like the FED 5 but now I'm wondering if I should bother with it.
normally range finder lines on FED 5S are painted on the ocular this meanstht it is IMPOSSIBLE to readjust them once they are factory prepaired. If you have such a problem that I see as negligible you have an error in the lens adjustment observe the plane parallelism between film frame and screw lens mount.It will be the only possibility Regards LP
In theory, it is possible to adjust the front lens of the rangefinder. But you will have to adjust the rangefinder again. In practice, the most difficult thing is to adjust the front lens, because it is glued into a metal frame.
Cheers, everyone. The issue was that the whole rangefinder/viewfinder assembly was not sitting straight on the body. The threaded hole for one of the three screws holding it in place was offset, and that pulled the whole assembly out of parallel with the body. I took that screw out and now the ass'y is straight(er).
You can tilt the front viewfinder prism to adjust the field-of-view but that makes it very difficult to get the rangefinder image in line with the dark contrast mark in the prism. You can also remove the back eyepiece with the framelines on it and shave off some material to move it left or right. I did both but the issue turned out to be as described above.
I bought another 5C later that didn't have this issue and that's the one I've been using ever since.