21mm finder eye relief

WJJ3

WJJ3

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Hi folks,

I am interested in what people's thoughts are on eye relief of 21mm finders.

I am using the Voigtlander 21mm plastic finder, have tried the current Zeiss 21mm finder as well, and find eye relief to be not so good on either. In full disclosure, I have to admit I feel eye relief for the 35mm frame in a standard 0.72 finder is not good; to the point that I bought a 0.58 M6 to shoot the 35mm focal length. So I know I am already pretty picky regarding this, but I would like to hear others' thoughts about eye relief, and 21mm finder eye relief in particular.

Thanks and happy shooting!
 
I just got a CV 21/4 with the plastic finder. Without glasses, I don't have any problem with the eye relief; with them, I can see where it might be something of an issue, but there's still a good bit of space around the brightlines.

That said, I shoot with a lot of old cameras with squinty finders of dubious worth, so any big, bright VF with framelines is going to be a marked improvement over what I'm accustomed to.
 
Thanks for your reply. I actually found the eye relief of the Voigtlander finder better than the Zeiss finder, so it's probably pretty good.

I wonder how other 21mm finders are...
 
I recently bought a Ricoh GV-1 finder, which has brightlines for 21 and 28mm lenses; just right for me as these are my wides. The view is excellent, clear, and undistorted, with plenty of eye relief with or without glasses. I take a -2 diopter prescription, and the image is sharp for me without glasses.

BUT, there is a bit of a challenge. The shoe on the finder is offset to one side, so if used on a Barnack or most M's, the body of the finder covers the shutter speed dial. I had assumed that the shoe could be moved easily over to the other side as was the case with a lot of old shoe-mount accessories. I assumed wrong.



This finder will spend most of its time on my M5 where the shoe position is not a problem, but to fit it to other cameras I was forced to bodge up a little adapter, by taking a flash shoe adapter block, slicing it across the middle, and gluing the halves back together with a large offset. Easy to do and kind of fun, so I can now use the finder on other cameras as well.

Cheers,
Dez
 
I recently bought a 21mm Yashica SLR finder, I had read alot of good things about it on various Leica forums. It tends to normally go for a lot according to the Cameraquest website, so I was extremely lucky to get it. It was either that one, or the Leitz finder. I'm glad I got the Yashica.

I'm enjoying using it on my mirror-lockup Minolta SLR's with 21mm lens. It has excellent eye relief.
 
I am an eyeglass wearer, but not for photography. I prefer diopter correction, -2.0 in my case. I have the black rectangular Leica 21 matched to the later 2.8 lenses. I find there to be little to no relief and in my opinion, the framelines are hard to see. That said, I find it surprisingly accurate.
 
I have the Leica black plastic 21mm viewfinder. I can use it while wearing my glasses and find it provides a good side-to-side view. The edge of the viewfinder coincide with the framelines so you can't see anything outside the them. I really like it.
 
Dez said:
I recently bought a Ricoh GV-1 finder, which has brightlines for 21 and 28mm lenses; just right for me as these are my wides. The view is excellent, clear, and undistorted, with plenty of eye relief with or without glasses. I take a -2 diopter prescription, and the image is sharp for me without glasses.

BUT, there is a bit of a challenge. The shoe on the finder is offset to one side, so if used on a Barnack or most M's, the body of the finder covers the shutter speed dial. I had assumed that the shoe could be moved easily over to the other side as was the case with a lot of old shoe-mount accessories. I assumed wrong.



This finder will spend most of its time on my M5 where the shoe position is not a problem, but to fit it to other cameras I was forced to bodge up a little adapter, by taking a flash shoe adapter block, slicing it across the middle, and gluing the halves back together with a large offset. Easy to do and kind of fun, so I can now use the finder on other cameras as well.

Cheers,
Dez
Click to expand...


Very cool solution! And the 21/28 frameline combo seems much more practical than the 21/25 from CV.

The eye relief of my CV 21mm is not bad, so I can imagine this is working fine for you. Thanks for sharing
 
Nokton48 said:
I recently bought a 21mm Yashica SLR finder, I had read alot of good things about it on various Leica forums. It tends to normally go for a lot according to the Cameraquest website, so I was extremely lucky to get it. It was either that one, or the Leitz finder. I'm glad I got the Yashica.

I'm enjoying using it on my mirror-lockup Minolta SLR's with 21mm lens. It has excellent eye relief.
Click to expand...

Interesting about the Yashica finder. Does it have brightline frame lines?
 
burancap said:
I am an eyeglass wearer, but not for photography. I prefer diopter correction, -2.0 in my case. I have the black rectangular Leica 21 matched to the later 2.8 lenses. I find there to be little to no relief and in my opinion, the framelines are hard to see. That said, I find it surprisingly accurate.
Click to expand...

I am particularly interested in this finder. Is this the metal 12002?
Unfortunate to hear the frame lines are hard to see. The form factor looks great, and I was hoping the view would be too. I wonder if the diopter decreases the eye relief at all?
 
jcb4718 said:
I have the Leica black plastic 21mm viewfinder. I can use it while wearing my glasses and find it provides a good side-to-side view. The edge of the viewfinder coincide with the framelines so you can't see anything outside the them. I really like it.
Click to expand...

This seems like one of the best options. Glad to hear you are having success with it. It sounds like there were several iterations of the plastic 21mm finder...
 
jcb4718 said:
I have the Leica black plastic 21mm viewfinder. I can use it while wearing my glasses and find it provides a good side-to-side view. The edge of the viewfinder coincide with the framelines so you can't see anything outside the them. I really like it.
Click to expand...

I have both the Voigtlander 21mm finder and the Leica 12 2008 (black plastic) finder. The Leica finder offers more eye relief (about 2mm better) but is a little more distorted than the VC finder. The VC finder is a slightly higher magnification and gives a very bright image with less distortion than the Leica 12 2008.
 
WJJ3 said:
I am particularly interested in this finder. Is this the metal 12002? Unfortunate to hear the frame lines are hard to see. The form factor looks great, and I was hoping the view would be too. I wonder if the diopter decreases the eye relief at all?
Click to expand...

Sorry, mine is the plastic variant and there is NO diopter correction involved with the finder itself. At 21mm, I do not need to have a clear image -perhaps that is why I have a tough time with the framelines? Anyway, like I said, I found it be accurate regardless -at least as accurate as one could hope for at this width.
 
There is always the Frankenfinder #12011.
I can still see the full 21mm frame an inch back from the eye piece.
It also takes diopters .
 
FrozenInTime said:
There is always the Frankenfinder #12011.
I can still see the full 21mm frame an inch back from the eye piece.
It also takes diopters .
Click to expand...

This sounds great. It's too bad its such a huge thing. I guess thats what it has to be to do what it does. I'd bet the 12011 on an Md would be a great super-wide rig...
 
ChrisN said:
I have both the Voigtlander 21mm finder and the Leica 12 2008 (black plastic) finder. The Leica finder offers more eye relief (about 2mm better) but is a little more distorted than the VC finder. The VC finder is a slightly higher magnification and gives a very bright image with less distortion than the Leica 12 2008.
Click to expand...

A couple mm's might be a game changer for me. This might be the route I go...Thanks for your input!
 
This is the finder I am using now. It has enough eye relief for me. I can definitely say this Leica finder has better eye relief than Voigtlander's plastic 21mm finder, and Zeiss' 21mm finder.


barnack by WilliamJosephJefferson, on Flickr
 
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