Unlike the K-60 WLF which is
excellent, the waist level finder for the K-88 is a pathetic excuse of
optical engineering. The finder itself is constructed well enough, it's
the magnifier that is at fault. Besides being distorted at the
edges it is very badly out of focus, aprox 10mm too high. In another
words it's useless. The easy solution is to buy a hasselblad WLF as
they fit and have an optically good magnifier. But never one to take
the easy road, I decided to try to hack up something myself.
I have a broken minolta autocord which has become a parts camera and the magnifier looked like it might work. I popped it out of the minolta hood and cut a round hole out of the top of the Kiev finder sized to fit. I figured worst case I just ruined a part I was fixing to throw away <G>. After I installed this larger round magnifier I realized it too was out of focus, about 10mm in the other direction. As luck would have it, I'm near sighted with about a -2.0 diopter correction needed and this magnifier is this amount off! Obviously for most people this example wouldn't work but in my case this hack worked out perfectly. The point is with some looking around you can probably find a magnifier from some other camera that can be hacked into this finder to make it useful. Below is a shot of the finished finder on my camera. The lines seen on the magnifier are actually grid lines on the Maxwell focus screen.
I have a broken minolta autocord which has become a parts camera and the magnifier looked like it might work. I popped it out of the minolta hood and cut a round hole out of the top of the Kiev finder sized to fit. I figured worst case I just ruined a part I was fixing to throw away <G>. After I installed this larger round magnifier I realized it too was out of focus, about 10mm in the other direction. As luck would have it, I'm near sighted with about a -2.0 diopter correction needed and this magnifier is this amount off! Obviously for most people this example wouldn't work but in my case this hack worked out perfectly. The point is with some looking around you can probably find a magnifier from some other camera that can be hacked into this finder to make it useful. Below is a shot of the finished finder on my camera. The lines seen on the magnifier are actually grid lines on the Maxwell focus screen.