Do you shoot with an accessory finder?

[Karl K]

I've got a Contax G-1 and I like shooting with the 28mm Distagon, but I don't really enjoy looking through the rather small viewfinder. Does anyone have experience shooting with an accessory 28mm finder? Since the G-1 is autofocus and I do mostly discreet street shooting, I think this could be a winning combo. Any ideas, pros and cons?

 

[bjorke]

The G 21mm has such a finder.

The 28mm Voightlander finder is half-decent, the Leitz ones obscenely expensive. There are various little ones on EBAY but they also have tiny peeopholes usually. Voigtlander also makes a teeeeensy 28mm finder in addition to their standard ones. I've seen people glue it to their compact digicams.

I actually doubt that it will be FASTER -- the main advantage might be seeing beyond the edge of the frame. And it looks groovy.

 

[John Shriver]

Key thing is knowing where the autofocus point is, I presume there's a mark in the G's finder.

Bright line finders can be very nice, although not many 28mm finders are bright line.

 

[Lee L]

The Cosina-Voigtlander finders I use (15, 21, 28/35 mini combo, 40, 50, 75, and 90) are all very nice. You might look at the 28/35 combo mini finder. It's about 0.5 magnification, and very bright and clean. It's also very small. I've gotten used to it, and I like it a lot, but you might find that the frame lines are a bit too close and cluttered for your taste. I haven't used the C-V 28 finder, but if all the other C-V finders I've used are good indicators, it should be very nice.

The only problem I've found with the 28/35 is that the rubber grommet at the rear to protect glasses is too lose, and might be lost from the friction of putting it in and out of a camera bag.

Lee

 

[Ole]

I've got Cosina-Voigtländer 15mm and 21mm with accessory finders, and a Russian turret finder for all other focal lengths (that's with a CV Bessa-T, which doesn't have a viewfinder). I thought the tiny peephole of the turret finder would be difficult to use, but I was pleased to discover that my assumptions were completely wrong: The silly thing is good!

 

[Lee Shively]

Not with the Contax but I do use a 21mm finder for the Voigtlander lens on my Leicas. With the 21mm, the depth of field is so great I generally just zone focus. Using a 28mm for zone focusing might be a little trickier but not unmanageable. With autofocus, you would need to know where the AF sensors are pointing in respect to the auxillary viewfinder. That should be fairly simple to work out. Once that is done, you should have that "winning combo" you mentioned.

 

[bjorke]

Ignore what I said about being faster.

Watch this video of Garry Winogrand with his M4 and a 28mm accesory finder:

http://2point8.whileseated.org/?p=152

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

I don't know what this Leica gizmo costs, but I tried one at PMA, and it looked like a decent thing (if a bit plasticky)--

http://www.leica-camera.us/photography/m_system/accessories/viewfinder_accessories/1374.html

Set the focal length, and it changes the brightline frame. Set the subject distance, and the frame moves up and down for parallax correction. It's not as nice as a Linhof zoom finder, but it does what it needs to.

Hunted around and found a couple of places selling this finder for $800-850. At that price it should zoom and be made of metal like the Linhof finder.

 

[polaski]

The 15mm CV on a Cosina L body requires it.

I'm starting to play with a 35-200mm external viewfinder on a FED 1. Not the turret type, a really nice cheaper off-brand version of the Tewe finder.

I now use a Contur finder on my Voigtlander Perkeo II. Much better than the little VF that the camera body has.

 

[bjorke]

I don't know what this Leica gizmo costs, but I tried one at PMA, and it looked like a decent thing (if a bit plasticky)--

http://www.leica-camera.us/photography/m_system/accessories/viewfinder_accessories/1374.html

Set the focal length, and it changes the brightline frame. Set the subject distance, and the frame moves up and down for parallax correction. It's not as nice as a Linhof zoom finder, but it does what it needs to.

Hunted around and found a couple of places selling this finder for $800-850. At that price it should zoom and be made of metal like the Linhof finder.

That looks horrible. A "colletable gizmo" but not one that lets you acheive the desired effects -- fast shooting & greater eye relief.

 

[DBP]

I use one of the ex-Soviet turret finders, as well as the 15mm Voigtlander. It's not bad when zone focusing, a bit slow otherwise because of the need to switch eyes.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

That looks horrible. A "colletable gizmo" but not one that lets you acheive the desired effects -- fast shooting & greater eye relief.

I picked it up and tried it on a camera, and it worked better than it looked, and it doesn't add much weight to the camera, but you just get a smaller frameline if you set a longer focal length. Functionally, it's not much different from the old-style Linhof finder (which uses a mask instead of framelines), which I managed to get used to, but for the price, there are better options (like a handful of single focal length finders, for all the lenses you actually own, for instance).

 

[PHOTOTONE]

Many, if not most of the lenses I want to use on my RFDR cameras require an external viewfinder. I do not find it difficult to get accustomed to focusing on the camera then switching to the external finder for composing.