Any left-eyed RF users out there?

[Saganich]

I've always preferred the left eye when using SLRs and find it challenging now to use the right eye with the CL. Anyone else?

My first 35mm camera was a Minolta Hi-Matic F, when I was 13 years old, but I don't really remember which eye I used with it.

I was right eyed, but had to switch about ten years ago after cataract surgery and a retinal detachment. Turns out the retinal reattachment eye (left) is better for focusing now.

 

[CLAdictic]

Have been using the left eye for past year due to cataracts. The difference between the right vs left is very clear, pun. Going for cataract surgery to clean up both eyes and will wait to see if I can go back to using my right eye. My surgeon said it will be rather dramatic.

 

[Horatio]

Despite my historical left-eye use, I am learning to using my right eye for RF photography. See my avatar for proof! I'm also practicing with both eyes open. The camera seems to disappear at times, which is pretty cool. When I get my next set of contact lenses, I may try a lens for near vision in the right eye so I can see the full viewfinder. I'd love to get these eyeglasses out of the way.

 

[Darthfeeble]

I was lefty when I was using an DSLR for years, an SLR before that, but when I got into using RFs I switched to right eye. Now I am moving to an SLR configured mirrorless and I find that right eye is still what works for me. According to the tests you're supposed to take I come up as left eye dominant, still I prefer to shoot right eye now, must be the big nose. Makes a good resting spot for the camera.

 

[Ronald M]

I thought switching to 4x5 would cure my problem. It did not because now everything is upside down and reversed l to R. The good part is I can use the focusing loupe with either eye.

Maybe a press camera?

 

[Bill Clark]

I use my left eye.

Haven’t thought about it.

 

[Richard G]

I am left-eye dominant and have always used my left eye with SLRs, microscopes, telescopes, etc. I found my Leica to be a liberation as I could both use my left eye and advance the film without removing the camera from my eye. However, in my 60's I started to have problems with my left eye and, in frustration, forced myself to use the right. This was difficult, but after a year I could manage with my right with few problems. In fact, now when I pick up my camera I unthinkingly put the viewfinder to my right eye! Will power over biology!

I'd say will power trusting biology. Like learning to get used to multifocals. I mastered that because I knew I could. The brain is adaptable. The optometrist warned me not to use them for tennis. I had a shoulder problem which I managed in the usual way: just waiting for it to get better aka fear it was irreparable arthritis....Anyway by the time I played tennis next I was so used to multifocals I thought nothing of it and played just as well as ever, which is not that well.

 

[cbella]

Left eye dominant and right handed. PITA. Can’t aim a shotgun. Can`t use a RF with both eyes. Probably why can’t play golf, tennis, baseball, or badminton.

Had an optometrist once whose job in WW2 was to screen applicants for aerial gunner. If left/right like I am, the Army did not spend 10 cents trying to train them. Guess they made them cooks or typists.

Just have to shoot left! I figured that out in the Army when I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn shooting right with the M-16.

 

[shorelineae]

Lefy-eye dominant here. I find cameras with the viewfinder in the center a bit awkward to use.

 

[Damaso]

I've always used my left eye!

 

[moggi1964]

I had an accident as a kid that affected my right eye and so my left eye is the dominant one.

My little Welta Belmira has a viewfinder on the far right of the camera, part of the reason I got it as well as it is a pretty little thing.

 

[ktmrider]

Left eye dominant and right handed. It does not seem slow me up using the Leica but makes shooting a handgun a bit of a struggle. And I was the firearms instructor for US Customs aviation for ten years before retirement.

 

[skucera]

I too am left eye dominant and right handed. When a gym teacher figured that out about me in the mid-Seventies he tried to turn me into a pitcher because I was one of the larger 7th graders. He read that some of the greatest major league pitchers were left eye dominant, and wanted to see if I would be the secret weapon for his ninth grade baseball team in a couple of years. Well, that didn't work out as well as training me to be a fast middle distance runner. Oh well....

One of my mom's cousins had a theory that left eye dominance was common among right-brained people like artists and architects. He was a world famous landscape architect, and I think he was on to something there. I'm a test engineer with two art degrees, and being able to harness both sides of my brain to solve test problems has been a secret weapon at work for decades.

As for using most rangefinders, I find being left eyed to be a slight annoyance, especially on DSLR's because I leave greasy nose prints on the touch screen. 😉 Otherwise, I find that using my right eye in the viewfinder is difficult but possible, rather like training myself to shoot rifles with my right eye while still leaving my left eye open to see the greater scene. Winking my left eye closed is easier in the camera, but when using a rifle it results in the classic problem of being "glassed in," meaning that you see only what is in the scope or viewfinder, possibly missing something dangerous outside that scope's or viewfinder's field of view. OK, in a camera, it might mean missing a better picture than the one you have framed... not so deadly as in warfighting.

I wish camera manufacturers would learn a lesson from rifle scope designers. I would love to have a rangefinder that used a reflex viewfinder using optical qualities of a red-dot reflex scope, and a lens matched to frame at the same magnification. OK, that would probably have a market of a dozen people and wouldn't be a financial success, but I'd like to try it anyway. It would be a little like a wire-frame viewfinder, but with focusing and exposure data around the edges... at least in my imagination.

Scott

 

[jgrainger]

Left eyed, left handed - though I can sufficiently use both hands for stuff like watch repair.. picking up and placing parts with tweezers and using screwdrivers.


All the stuff about using a rangefinder with the right eye is totally lost on me.. while I can just about manage it, I don't care for being able to see/ see outside the frame lines anyway (just wanting to see my initial "vision" and nothing more - especially for 135mm landscape shots). I'd also think it would be more practical to use an SLR with the right eye - with the viewfinder being closer to the wind knob/ lever.

 

[halfaninchawater]

One more left-eye dominant and right handed RF user. My dad was a photographer and was also left eye dominent. Not sure if this would be nurture or nature.

 

[Franko]

http://leicaphilia.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/PORTRAIT-René-Burri-.jpg

Left-eyed Leica never seemed to bother Rene Burri.

 

[nikon_sam]

Right handed but left eye shooter...
I like TLR and large format because I can use both eyes to frame but will still only use my left eye to focus with loupe or magnifier...
I find it odd to watch anyone shoot with their right eye...
It sounds weird to say that my right eye can't frame like my left...

 

[MJ Buckpitt]

Focus with my left but compose and capture with my right.

 

[CLAdictic]

Cataract surgery over, back to using the right eye. Before the surgery the right eye was bad, the left not so bad. The difference in clarity was astounding. Now I'm 20-20 left eye, 20-25 in the right.

 

[markjwyatt]

I never really thought about this before, I can see the benefit of being right eye dominant. I am left eye dominant. Maybe that is why I like using viewfinders.