I own an F3HP. It has what I consider to be the best viewfinder on any
camera I've ever owned. See my other post about where my confusion lies.
It's in not understanding why lower magnification doesn't always mean higher
eyepoint. Seems to me if you made the magnification 50%, it would
automatically mean the eyepoint would be high enough to see the whole frame,
regardless of how many mm of relief it would equate to.
Thanks,
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Johnston" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, February 12, 2001 8:22 PM
Subject: Re: MZ-S viewfinder magnification
> Ed wrote:
>
> > Can someone please explain to me again why magnification and eyepoint
are
> > not the same? It seems to me, that for any given % (H&V field of view),
the
> > resulting magnification with a true 50mm lens would pretty much tell you
the
> > eyepoint would be about the same, right? I know I'm missing something
here,
> > but since I'm missing it, I don't know what it is I'm missing......
>
>
> Ed,
> Magnification is the relative size of the image in the viewfinder,
measured
> under certain conditions, usually with a 50mm lens set at infinity or at
> some specified distance (I'm sure somebody will correct me about this if
I'm
> wrong--I actually don't know if magnification has an ANSI standard or if
> it's just measured by convention or what). With 1x magnification, the
image
> in the viewfinder would be as large as the same image seen with the naked
> eye.
>
> Eye releif is how far from the eyepiece you can have your eye and still
see
> the entire viewfinder image. They make "sports finders" which have, in
> effect, an eye relief of infinity--you can hold the camera at arms' length
> and still see the whole frame, like a leetle tiny TV set. With a finder
with
> poor eye relief (early screwmount Leicas, as one example) you have to have
> your eyeball almost touching the eyepiece before you can see the whole
> frame.
>
> One of the ways that manufacturers improve eye relief is by minifying the
> viewfinder image--making it lower magnification.
>
> If you ever get the chance, take a Nikon F3 and slide on the original
stock
> (DE2?) finder. The magnification is high but the eye relief is average.
Then
> slide on the HP (high-eyepoint) finder. You'll immediately see the
> difference. The image is much smaller, but you don't have to hold your eye
> close up to the eyepiece to see the whole thing.
>
> One of the great hidden truths about the history of camera design is that
> the original Leica M, the M3 of 1953, was designed with a
high-magnification
> viewfinder for a specific purpose: so you could hold both eyes open while
> looking through it. As your eye dominance adjusted, you could actually
learn
> to see through the thing with normal binocular vision, just as if you
> weren't holding a camera up to your eye and looking through glass at all,
> but with one crucial difference--you could still see the brightlines. So
the
> effect was of looking at the world unimpeded except for a white frame
> hanging in your field of vision. The closest thing to a camera inside your
> head yet invented.
>
> I say this is a "hidden truth" because the need for wide-angle framelines
> soon permanently killed the .9x Leica viewfinder, and even Leica, when it
> returned to a high-magnfication viewfinder, felt the need to design it so
it
> could be used with a 35mm lens--and the idiots made it too small for the
> "both eyes open" effect that the M3 had provided!! They made it .85x
instead
> of .9x and the both-eyes-open trick didn't work. I still get a chuckle
over
> this. The company completely missed _its own_ point.
>
> The ME Super has the closest thing to a life-size finder of any camera I
> own; the OM-2n was even a tiny bit better because there was less parallax.
> Both cameras with a 50mm lens provide an image about the same size as that
> of the naked eye.
>
> Hope this helps. There may be errors in the above, technically, but I
think
> this will give you the gist of things.
>
> --Mike
>
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