Rolleidoscop Prism Installation

This is a Kiev prism mounted on my Rolleidoscop, the meter even works well, it makes Medium Format 3D even more convenient than before.  It took quite a while to figure out how to do it but it should take you about three or four hours and a few tools.

Take a Pentacon Six waist level finder (on Ebay they are about $30 or less) and dremel it down until the lower ledges at the back are 6.5mm above the bottom surface and the front edge is 7.5mm above the bottom surface.  It is interesting that the ground glass on the Rolleidoscop is not at a perfect right angle but is tilted ever so slightly, I think the mirror angle makes up for this. The top of the ledge is 1.7mm higher than the bottom both at the front of the finder and the rear.  Drill 4 holes through the casting so that they line up exactly with the old finder screw holes in the camera body. This way you can always replace back the orginal finder when you want it orginal again.  Nothing on the body has been altered. Secondly I tapped two holes on each side of the plate and thirdly I tapped two 1.4mm screw holes in the top to hold the plate.

I purchased a Kiev 60 adapter to Pentacon Six camera from Baier Fototechnik for 84 Euros, you can get the adapter and prism for 198 Euros.  Then I disassembled it and drill two holes on each side and additionally two small ones at the top and two at the bottom to hold down the adapter to the now dremelled Pentacon WL finder platform seen in the above photo
 
 

As I am restoring a antique Bowlus travel trailer I had some .020 Aluminum sheet that easily bends to the shape.  I cut it out and drilled an tapped a number of screws that would hold the aluminum into the BaierFoto adapter. I put a strip of black felt around the bottom part to stop any reflections.

I assembled it all up with the Kiev micro-prism ground glass in there, bright, with a diagonal split image in the middle.  Then I covered the adapter in some pre-glued leather that they sell by the sheet at Micro-Tools.

All done, it looks good, OK as good as the Kiev prism can look and it work real nice.  I find that compared to my Sekonic meter I set the f stop on the meter at just past 5.6 and the meter worked well.  There is a site on the internet that shows you how to adjust the meter if it is off,  and most of them are.

Here is the back, you can just see the little trim piece in the back under the finder.

OK, there are three different styles of leather, but I'm not that particular.

The Kiev waist level finder is great and it's got a nice lens, a sports finder and a simple mirror reflex system for quick focusing when using the sports finder.  The best waist level finder I've ever seen.

Here it is with the finder down it's a bit higher and not as attractive as with the Rolleidoscop finder but much more useful.  If you want other information just email me at the address below.  Good luck and I hope you enjoy medium format 3D as much as I do.

John Long

Here is a pic of my twinned Rollei SLX setup with 150mm lenses, the Rollei remote syncs the shutters up to 1/500.

Installing a flash sync
I just took a part I found in my old camera parts box and modified it a bit.  It needs to be insulated from the base of the camera and then the centrre post of the sync connection shorted out on the shutter knob that has the arrow pointed to it.  I took the sync plug out of an old camera they come out rather easy and just drilled the side of the housing and put it in.  If you put the camera on T the shutter knob moves and you can adjust so the flash fires when the shutter is completely open, that is why there is a screw to adjust this.