Viewfinder Accessories: What Each One Actually Does
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Search for a "finder" and you'll get half a dozen completely different objects. They attach in different places, they solve different problems, and only some of them will fit your camera at all.
Short answer
- Right-angle finder — clips onto the eyepiece so you look down instead of straight ahead. For low angles, tripod work and macro.
- Eyepiece magnifier — enlarges the centre of the view so you can focus precisely by hand.
- Diopter correction lens — adjusts the eyepiece to your eyesight, so you can shoot without glasses.
- External (shoe-mount) finder — a separate optical finder that sits on top of the camera, showing the framing for one particular focal length.
- Waist-level finder — a hood you look down into, seeing the image on a focusing screen.
The first three attach to your camera's eyepiece and are model-specific. The last two are more general, but have their own rules.
Right-angle finders
A small periscope for your camera. It fits over the eyepiece and turns the view through ninety degrees, so you can look down into it from above.
What it's for:
- Low shooting positions — flowers, pets, anything near the ground, without lying down on it.
- Tripod work — the camera stays where you set it, and you move instead.
- Macro and copy work — where the camera points down at a table and there's no comfortable way to get an eye behind it.
Most of them rotate, so you can look from either side as well as from directly above, and many include their own magnification. On a manual-focus camera, that combination — comfortable position plus a magnified view — is what makes precise focusing bearable.
Eyepiece magnifiers
These enlarge the centre of the focusing screen. You gain focusing accuracy and lose the ability to see the whole frame at once, which is why most flip up out of the way rather than staying put.
Worth having if you focus manually with fast lenses, or if your camera's screen is dim — a common situation with older bodies, where the screen technology simply wasn't as bright as it later became.
Diopter correction lenses
The cheapest useful upgrade for anyone who wears glasses.
A small lens that fits into or over the eyepiece, correcting the view to your prescription so you can shoot with your glasses off. Glasses hold your eye away from the eyepiece, which is why glasses wearers often can't see the whole frame — a diopter lens solves that directly.
They're sold in strengths, usually marked in numbers like -2, -1, +1, +2. The strength you want is not simply your prescription, because most viewfinders already have a built-in correction of their own. If you can, try before you commit; failing that, expect to get it right on the second attempt rather than the first.
External shoe-mount finders
A separate optical finder that slides into the accessory shoe. You compose through it instead of through the camera.
Two situations call for one:
- A lens wider than the camera's own finder covers. Common with rangefinders, where the built-in frame lines only go so wide.
- Cameras with no usable finder for the job at all.
Each finder is made for a particular focal length — that's what the number on it means. Two things to keep in mind: the framing it shows is approximate, and because it sits above and beside the lens, close subjects will be offset from what you saw. That offset is parallax, and it's the price of the wider view.
Waist-level finders
A folding hood over a focusing screen. You look down into it from above, seeing the image the lens is projecting.
Standard on many medium format cameras and available for some SLRs. Two things surprise people the first time.
The image usually appears reversed left to right. That's a consequence of looking down at a mirrored image rather than through a prism, and it takes a little practice to follow a moving subject. (Some finders add a prism specifically to correct it — those are usually described as such.)
The other is the working position: you shoot from chest height, without a camera in front of your face, which is why waist-level finders are liked for street and portrait work.
Working out what fits
Anything that attaches to the eyepiece is matched to the camera, and eyepiece shapes and sizes vary by maker and by model. The approach is the same one we use for lens mounts:
- Check the marking on the accessory. Most carry a model code.
- Know your camera's exact model name, then match to that rather than to a family.
- Shoe-mount finders are more forgiving — a standard accessory shoe is a standard accessory shoe — but check that the focal length marked on the finder is the one you're shooting.
The same thinking is covered in more detail in how to identify your lens mount.
What to check when buying used
- The glass. These are optics too. Look through them at something bright — haze and fungus can grow in a finder just as they can in a lens.
- Dust inside. Annoying to look at, though it won't reach your photographs.
- The mount. Clips, threads and slide-on rails all wear. It should hold firmly without being forced.
- Rotation and adjustment. If it turns or has a dioptre ring, work it through its range and check it stays where you put it.
- Rubber eyecups. Old rubber hardens and cracks; check it before you rely on it to seal out light.