In a message dated 1/3/02 10:48:32 PM Central Standard Time, [email protected] writes:
<< Anyone have any good / cheap suggestions on how I should go about obtaining a focusing loupe and focusing cloth? I need something that will work reasonable well with a 4X5 view camera, but am not interested in spending too much, obviously. I have a finney that I am experimenting with using for lens as well as pinhole work.. Any tips appreciated, Jeff >> What I did was, go to a local fabric shop , and searched for black cloth , something in a cotton blend ( so it could be washed ) and got double the amount( reason being one thickness did not screen out the light totally ), folded it over in half, then sewed seams all along the edges ( I had a friend do this part) and voila I had a focusing cloth for my 4X5 . I suspect you could buy a black piece , and a white piece to sew over it , to keep out the heat while focusing in summers , since then I have purchased a really nice focusing cloth from the View Camera store in AZ. ..It fits snugly around my view finder by means of elastic, but the price was about $54 .00 maybe, cant recall, but it is one that will last and take some abusing over the years , you could probably sew in elastic to the pieces of cloth you purchase, too. At the cheap end of the spectrum , I used to use an Agfa loupe , dunno what the price is now, (maybe around $6.00-8.00 now,) its power is about 4X as I recall , maybe 6X , since it is plastic, its not the sharpest, but it works, also I just bought cheap magnifying glasses to use too, but always seemed to lose them , so bought the Agfa loupes instead. Hope this is of help to you .
