Flash shoe viewfinder, portrait orientation?

Hi all,

I recently bought a Fuji GS645S. It's a mixed bag so far: image quality is great, it's nice and light, but -- and this is where my question comes in -- I really don't like its viewfinder. It's not just the rangefinder patch. The patch is small and hard to see, but workable for me. My problem is the viewfinder itself, which has quite a bit of barrel distortion, is dim, and has a strong blue cast (I've heard this is to enhance contrast when focusing).

I can live with this if needed, but I was wondering if I might be able to circumvent this issue with a flash-mounted viewfinder. The lens is roughly 35mm, so that's quite standard. The problems are that (1) the format is 6x4.5 rather than 3:2, and (2) the default orientation of the GS645S is portrait. I'm expecting that this means there's no good option, but I thought I'd ask in case anyone has come across such a thing...

Thanks for your help!

With my GS645S, I used a small Sunpak Auto 321 flash unit, not very powerful but enough for me. By default, the flash orientation matched with the vertical format of the camera.

Yes, if you could find a viewfinder that matches 35mm lens on 35mm camera and mask the sides, it would be pretty close. Otherwise, the more common 50mm lens on 35mm camera viewfinder could be mounted on the side of your camera with 2 sided tape.

It's a little ungainly, but something like this might work for you to flip a shoe mount viewfinder 90 degrees;

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1487540-REG/ulanzi_0915_pt_3s_triple_cold_shoe.html

bdial said:

It's a little ungainly, but something like this might work for you to flip a shoe mount viewfinder 90 degrees;

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1487540-REG/ulanzi_0915_pt_3s_triple_cold_shoe.html

Click to expand...

That's actually very cool and totally worth $6!

Nice find!

Thank you all for the suggestions! Agree, bdial's suggested flipped shoe mount seems like it might do the trick, even if somewhat ungainly. I guess the 3:2 problem remains. I'm starting to think that this is probably too complicated, I guess the finder isn't that bad.

Diffraction said:

The lens is roughly 35mm, so that's quite standard. The problems are that (1) the format is 6x4.5 rather than 3:2 ...

Click to expand...

The 645 aspect ratio is the same as a micro 4/3 camera.

Mounted on the micro 4/3 camera below is an Olympus VF-1 accessory viewfinder. This viewfinder was originally designed for a micro 4/3 lens with an angle-of-view that was equivalent to a 35mm lens on a 35mm film camera.

Olympus E-p1 by Narsuitus, on Flickr