Unhappy with the viewfinder on your DSLR?

The viewfinder on my Titan D100 is the first reason I will dump it (when I do dump it). It is a lousy, tiny viewfinder, an area L&M shoulda concentrated on when designing the already pricey housing. However, other than the small viewfinder, I don't find it a problem to shoot at sand level, I'd guess it'd be more of a convenience than a necessity.

Joe

Interestingly, 2 yrs ago at DEMA LMI told me that a magnifying viewfinder was being worked on. 6mos later the project had been dropped. I think that LMI was designing their own interchangeable unit but they seem to have dumped the still housing market altogether.

In regards to the 45deg viewer - Certainly you can lay down in the sand and shoot horizontal, but to "shoot up" from that level you'd need to dig a hole!!! I'm not suggesting that the viewer is essential, but it does allow us to achieve angles that are otherwise difficult or occasionally impossible. I thought I would use my S180 for some macro shooting but I find it limiting in comparison.

Two comments about viewfinders.

1) It's important to be able to put your mask right up against the viewfinder. I have a Canon 20D and just bought the Ikelite housing. Although it's very good overall, I am disappointed at the design of the rear of the housing - the sync cord connector is positioned directly below the viewfinder, so that it is really difficult to put your eye against the viewfinder (because your mouth and regulator hit the connector) <_< . Surely this is a design flaw. Why does the connector have to project out so far toward the diver? Anyway it's not working for me: some otherwise good photos have been spoiled because I could not see the corners of the frame. Checking focus is even harder, so I can't imagine using this rig for MF macro. Unless I learn to spit out the regulator every time I take a photo...

2) 45 degree and 90 degree viewfinders were common on some older land cameras and were popular with professionals for taking candid people + animal shots and for shooting into the sun. They did not have a big market because they were more expensive and they take some practice in eye-hand coordination. But I think that 45 degree viewfinders would be really useful underwater, and for the same reasons, such as photographing nervous fish.

I see digital photographers make sideway moves that cost thousands - nikon to canon; d100 to d70; rebel to d20 etc... These "upgrades" have minimal impact on image quality, or on the ability to capture a great image. Magnifying viewfinders may be pricey, but as long as they are interchangeable they will have a life span infinitely longer than the latest digicam. They can also improve your photographic experience (and hopefully your photography) more dramatically than swapping cameras.

Finally tried the GS Viewfinder on my subal housing this past weekend. At this time, I am quite please with the viewfinder with one reservation.

You have to look stright through the viewfinder. When you do that, the view is big and it was very easy to read off all the numerical display. However if I am a little bit off axis, either I could not see a thing or it was very blurry. After a few dives, I started to get the hang of getting the camera up, just right but not quite all the time yet and when I don't, it is quite annoying. Hopefully this will eventually become 2nd nature when I get more practice with it.

Hi!

To answer a couple of questions from this thread:

There's a manufacturer who already ordered one of those electronic gadgets to test it with an UW housing. UK-Germany will do it. I don't think that a display of this size will allow to judge focus. I believe it's a gadget for those who have got everything else :-) but UK thinks somebody should have a try first.

Further more, there'll be a 45° optical finder that allows a nearly 1:1 image of the focus screen at a distance of about 40mm!

Yes, it's very hard to design a good finder. The problem is that the lens system of a camera is designed to please the eye but not to fit an external optical system.

Extending (and bending) the way of light requires a series of lenses. My finder has 6 lenses in 5 groups and a prism (45°).

Usually you would get a small image (like looking through a telescope from the wrong side) bacause extending the eyepoint causes reduction of the viewing angle.

Furthermore, the prism limits the viewing angle (a 45° prism depends on total reflection) and causes some corner shading (which hopefully doesn't hurt too much).

To compensate this you have to use quite large lenses and corrent them (else you'd magnify the image errors too).

My finder has 40mm diameter on the rear lenses. It will be possible to view the whole focus screen with a mask (and there's enough room for the regulator too).

It's a tricky compromize between optical quality, weight, size and price. It costed me a fortune to have it calculated and designed.

I'm managing this finder project (a prototype is currently built) together with UK-Germany but we're open to sell the finders to others too.

My motto: if it's too expensive to get it for me alone, share it with as many others as possible to cut down costs :-)

Increasing the number of built units will help to gain a reasonable price for the device.

More images and further details will follow as soon as available.

Manufacturere's requests are welcome!

Helge ;-)=)

Helge,

Your drawing is conceptually not all that different from Seacam's. The Seacam S45 has more elements so yours might be a tad cheaper. They have 4 lens elements between the prism and housing, and 5 lens elements, not including the port, between the prism and eye.

The best UW viewfinder I have used is that of the RS. The 15 degree off-set is great and ones eye can be off-axis a bit and thinsg are still OK. The next level down would be the finders used in medium format housings - they have the advantage of looking at a larger ground-glass.

Tom