Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/11/19

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Subject: [Leica] Re: Mirrors, Prisms, and other illusions
From: Mike Johnston <michaeljohnston@ameritech.net>
Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1999 15:42:57 +0000

Somewhere in the literature for the new Minolta Maxxum 9 (sorry, yes, I
look at such things, may the ghost of Barnack forgive me), there is a
photo of an ordinary prism next to the 100% prism for the 9. The latter
is visibly quite a bit larger.

I made another call and was told that another reason for most SLRs
having less-than-100% coverage is that it hides slop in the design
tolerances for construction and calibration. Apparently, to have a true
100% finder the optical viewing system has to be very carefully and
precisely engineered, and very precisely put together, with no room for
error.

- --Mike