Who stole my sharpness?!

[Mr_T]

After some time of being kept in a lovely warm cupboard I noticed that my F80 was having some problems in focusing. This wasn't much but it did mean that I had to change the dioptre to compensate. At the time I thought that this was all due to my eyes. This was 2 years ago.

I just took the body out again and I looked through the viewfinder and what I saw surprised me. The best term I can use for the current focusing is that it's arsed.

I had looked into tweaking the focusing screen before and all the memories flooded back. I confidently removed the screen, looked at it and fumbled it back into place. Unsurprisingly this made no difference. I tried again with several different orientations all to no avail. It may be worth noting that the viewfinder is incredibly dim (this could just be because the camera is off, it's been a long time since I used it!).

Does anyone have any ideas? I had a look at the prices of repairs at Fixation and it appears that the cost would be exactly the same as buying another one from Grays (could get it a lot cheaper from ebay). It would be a shame to get rid of this one though as it us my first ever SLR.

 

[CT]

Just to state the obvious - adjusting the doiptre correction in the viewfinder has no effect on the sharpness of your images. What you see in the viewfinder can be a complete blurry fuzz, but the lens and AF system focuses entirely independently, and should still produce sharp images regardless of how sharp your viewfinder image is.... or isn't.

Are you basing your opinions on the lens sharpness purely on the viewfinder image, or on actual images produced by the camera? This could easily just be a problem with your mince pies, or just adjustment of the dioptre setting in the viewfinder. Rather than try to focus on a scene or subject to set the dioptre setting, the easiest way to adjust it is to set it so that the numerals in the viewfinder appear sharp - with specs if you wear them.

I don't mean to sound patronising, but as a specs wearer I know how this can creep up on you.

 

[Mr_T]

You're absolutely right, the title was indeed very poorly thought out. This is something I could never quite understand, for the last few years I was using my D200 with no dioptre correction at all and yet it was never right with my F80. I did a bit of fiddling around and it now seems to be a lot more reasonable (albeit with dust everywhere).

The eyesight on my right eye isn't as good as my left but I'm still left baffled as to why I only have to make this adjustment on the film body.

 

[Kev M]

Perhaps because the D200 viewfinder is that much smaller than the 35mm one that you haven't noticed it being a bit out:shrug:

 

[Mr_T]

Quite possibly. I'm probably just in denial at the moment about the fact that I need glasses or contact lenses.

 

[CT]

Quite possibly. I'm probably just in denial at the moment about the fact that I need glasses or contact lenses.

LOL. It's probably really that simple if you're much past the 40 mark.