Do you prefer a 45 or 180 degree viewfinder?

2 hours ago, diggy said:

Maybe the 45 takes some time to get used to ?

Yeah, it does, Diggy. Especially when sort-of panning to frame wide-angle or mid-water shots. But you do get used to it. I've had mine coming up on 15 years so am getting the hang of it.... I'd never leave home without it now. 

22 hours ago, TimG said:

Yeah, it does, Diggy. Especially when sort-of panning to frame wide-angle or mid-water shots. But you do get used to it. I've had mine coming up on 15 years so am getting the hang of it.... I'd never leave home without it now. 

You won't believe how embarrassing it was for me when I had arranged an underwater lesson on a dive for a relative newbie. He had a Sony system if I recollect correctly with a 45 degree viewfinder. Guess what ? I could just not find the proper frame or subject looking through it and had to abandon the lesson  So much for experience and teaching !

Will definitely give it a try again. Thanks Tim.

Diggy

I am a 45˚ person. Persuaded to get my first by the Wetpixel forums. I know have 4 - which is a bit excessive!

2 hours ago, diggy said:

Guess what ? I could just not find the proper frame or subject looking through it and had to abandon the lesson  So much for experience and teaching !

Brilliant!!! 

20 hours ago, Alex_Mustard said:

I am a 45˚ person. Persuaded to get my first by the Wetpixel forums. I know have 4 - which is a bit excessive!

 

Thanks Alex,

Some very valid and pertinent points made. Sadly now I will may be looking to buy a 45 degree viewfinder. But before that will borrow one for a trip and see where I am at. Last I tried using one was a COMPLETE disaster.

Diggy

I prefer the 45 degree viewfinder and used it for over a decade. I can comfortably look down to compose and don't have to hyper extend the neck whether shooting macro or wide.

I now have both and can try them out back-to-back starting next week.   I've shot the 180 since 2016 on a D810 then D850 Nauticam housing.

I was able to try a 45 degree finder at the Digital Shootout in Bonaire in June.  In July I bought a Z9 and housing for it, and I was told you had to change from a DSLR viewfinder to a ML viewfinder, so the 180 I had would not ... work?   

I bought the 45 degree ML, and I'm sure I'll like it for macro.   But for wide angle, I'm not so sure.  There are a lot of times I take a landscape shot and immediately rotate the camera vertically and get a portrait shot of the same subject.   With the 180, this is trivial.  

Anyway, I was curious to see if the 180 would fit the Z9 housing, so I tried it.  Fits just fine!  So I looked closely at the housings just now - the viewfinder mounts are identical!

Maybe the ML viewfinders somehow make the eye-detect monitor/viewfinder swap work, but I don't think so.

At any rate, I have both viewfinders and will find out soon if there are any deficiencies in the DSLR 180 on the ML camera.