Cleaning the Focusing Screen on a D200

In short, this operation requires a large amount of manual dexterity, wearing latex gloves, being very, very, very careful not to scratch the focusing screen during removal or putting it back in, and the patience of a saint.

For educational purposes, here's an excerpt from the manual showing the trickiest step (click to enlarge):



So I noticed there was a bit of dirt that wasn't on the lens, nor the mirror, nor the glass side of the viewfinder that faces me. So it was on the focusing screen. Taking a look inside, I realized that a bit of dust had gotten on the *back* side of the focusing screen. The only way to get to it would be to remove said focusing screen.

I'd heard that the D200 had a removable focusing screen, and I did a bit of googling for instructions on removing it. There was very little out there, and what there was ended up being completely useless. Often there were no pictures, and for a manual operation that requires moving bits around, a diagram or picture is a must have.

Anyway, there's a company that sells focusing screens for the D200 (Katz Eye) and they have instructions on how to swap it out. It's in a PDF file here.

In short, there's a small retaining wire holding the screen in place. With a very small flat screw driver, you can pull the retaining wire away from the tab holding it in place and use tweezers to grab the tab on the focusing screen and pull it out. Then you can clean out the area.

Sadly, getting it back in is a bit of a bitch, and I ended up scratching the screen and making it look worse than before I took it out frankly. Oh well, another lesson for experience.

The retaining wire is tough to put back in place. The Katz Eye manual said 'don't force it, if it doesn't click in place, chill out, sit back, and try again and push on the wire from a different direction'. Very good advice, as it turns out. After 40 or so tries to put the wire catch in place by pulling it down, I tried pushing it down from a slightly different direction and it caught!

To top it off, in my earlier tries to get the retaining clip / wire in place, it sprung out of the hinges holding it in place. Putting the wire back in place was fairly frustrating, but I eventually got it. Latex gloves made putting pressure on the wire and moving it around in tiny increments a lot easier.