Mamiya RB viewfinder screen

[Alastair]

A previous owner has made an attempt to clean the viewfinder screen of the beast. As a result the (non-)marching ants that mark the vertical edges of the frame in portrait orientation have gone for a wander and are on a wobbly huh. I'm guessing these are water-slide transfers.

Short of changing the screen (and there appears to be a scarcity of second-hand screens, there's a few new on Ebay) has anyone any tricks or suggestions? It's not impossible to roughly gauge where the edge is, but it's not very precise.

 

[CT]

A previous owner has made an attempt to clean the viewfinder screen of the beast. As a result the (non-)marching ants that mark the vertical edges of the frame in portrait orientation have gone for a wander and are on a wobbly huh. I'm guessing these are water-slide transfers.

Short of changing the screen (and there appears to be a scarcity of second-hand screens, there's a few new on Ebay) has anyone any tricks or suggestions? It's not impossible to roughly gauge where the edge is, but it's not very precise.

That's very strange Alastaire, although I did notice it in the ebay pics of your camera. I quite often give mine a good polish with a soft cloth (on the smooth side obviously) and there's no sign of the dotted lines going walkabout. If you're right and they're water slide transfers, I wonder if someone has washed the screen at some time perhaps?

Does your camera have the red line indicators under the screen (for horizontal format) which move out of the way when you rotate the back to vertical?

 

[Alastair]

The horizontal red bars come up and go away correctly.

It's not a major problem, and pricing up new replacements was getting on for the price of a secondhand 180mm lens. Ahh.. found a UK stockist, Sharif.

 

[CT]

Ah OK Alastair. The reason I asked about the red lines is I have two screens - one just has the dotted lines for vertical format and the other has dotted lines for landsacape and solid lines for vertical both marked on the screen, which leads me to think the red line indicators were a modification at some stage- perhaps one of the Pro S tweaks, but information on these cameras is actually pretty hard to find.