Having had the MX and F3HP at the same time(up until a few months ago), I always picked up the F3. Better viewfinder, didn't have to drive my face into the camera to see the full frame. And I don't wear glasses. High magnification is useless without enough eye relief to see the frame.
I do slightly prefer the finder on the plain F3 personally, but I picked the HP because most people consider it to be the best finder on 35mm SLR's. The M3 is overrated IMHO. The Bessa R2a/R2m is superior, as is a good SLR finder. I like a good rangefinder finder, and appreciate the advantages with slow glass (Finder doesn't get dimmer with slower lenses) but with fast glass, I'll take the SLR, especially if I have to shoot wide open, since I don't have to focus & recompose. But this is an area where I know my opinion and that of most people differs. -Adam graywolf wrote: > No, the F3hp has an lousy viewfinder compared to the F3, only you did > not have to drive the eyepiece into you eye to see the whole screen. > Decreasing the magnification gave more eye-relief and was a godsend to > anyone who wore glasses, it was worse in every other way. I certainly > preferred my MX's viewfinder to the F3hp's. > > The best viewfinder on any camera I have ever used was the old Leica M3, > my Mamiya Universal Press's viewfinder was almost as good. Of course, > they were not SLR's. Maybe Rob can tell us how the Mamiya 7's compares, > it is supposed to be rather good. > > -graywolf > > > Adam Maas wrote: >> I'm comparing them to two models which are considered to have among the >> best finders ever put in a 35mm SLR. The F3HP finder is generally >> considered the best 35mm finder ever (Matched only by the Leica R8/9) >> and the F100 has one of the best finders of an AF SLR (Outdone only by >> the F5 and EOS 1v). >> >> -Adam >> >> >> J. C. O'Connell wrote: >>> HUH? I looked thru an istD finder and was shocked >>> how small (tunnel vision ) the image looked compared to ANY of my >>> Pentax (full frame) 35mm film bodies. Why are you >>> comparing them to some of the worst slr finders in this regard >>> that arent even pentax made models? I agree with graywolf that they have >>> a long way to go if they ( pentax dslrs ) are all similar to the istD >>> at this point and the goal is to better match the pentax >>> 35mm film bodies views. >>> jco >>> >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of >>> Adam Maas >>> Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 1:36 PM >>> To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List >>> Subject: Re: manually focusing a DSLR >>> >>> >>> Actually, they don't need a 1.5x magnificationto match the 35mm finders >>> (except maybe an MX or OM) as they already run much higher >>> magnifications on most DSLR's than 35mm film(Digital Rebels and >>> pentamirror Nikons excepted). >>> >>> To match my F3 (0.75x magnification) a DSLR would need 1.125x >>> magnification to match the magnification of the F3 (0.75 x 1.5). If you >>> put a DK-21M on the DSLR (1.17x magnification) you'd need a .96x >>> magnification finder (1.125/1.17) which is damned close to the .95x on >>> the K10D. >>> >>> I've compared the F100 (96%, 0.76x [x1.5x=1.14]) to a D200+DK-21M >>> (0.95%, 0.94x x 1.17x = 1.0998x) and they're nearly indistinguishable. >>> >>> -Adam >>> >>> >>> graywolf wrote: >>>> And these cameras really need 1.5x viewfinder magnification to match a >>>> similar 35mm. I suppose the eyepiece is too far from the ground glass >>> to >>>> do that economically. >>>> >>>> Adam Maas wrote: >>>>> Note the 10D/20D/30D finder is smaller than the *istD or K10D (it's >>>>> the >>>>> same coverage, but only .9x magnification instead of the .95x of the >>>>> Pentax's) >> > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
