mark-b
Well-known
I got a nice 35mm Elmar on my Fed 1g, which has two viewfinders: one for focusing, and the other for composing. My question is, can the composing viewfinder be modified so that it shows the field of view of a 35mm lens?
Nickfed
Well-known
I don't think that is very practical but KMZ make a nice 35mm finder which you can get on eBay for about $25. Indeed it far superior to anything you could ever build into the FED 1g and, since the ragefinder is separate, it hardly matters which viewfinder you are looking through.
rxmd
May contain traces of nut
Well in theory it could. You could try to take the optics from a compact or disposable camera with approximately the correct field of view. However, it would take some time to find the proper optics and they're unlikely to fit without some modification to the top plate, which would be quite ugly. It would indeed make more sense to use an external viewfinder.
mark-b
Well-known
Reason why i ask is that those external VF's are bulky, and they obscure efforts to use the focusing VF.
Nickfed
Well-known
ZorkiKat
ЗоркийК&
If you use the Soviet turret (which were really designed for Contax styled Kiev and later, higher profiled Zorki /FEDcameras), the protruding rear end would prevent comfortable RF eyepiece sighting. The Zorki being a near exact derivative of the Leica, the turret finder would indeed be somewhat a mis-match.
However, if an external finder designed for a Barnack Leica was used instead, bulk and obstruction will no longer be issues to sighting the VF eyepiece. Try an Imarect or its copy instead. These sit on the shoe and their rear eyepieces don't project outwards.
A similar one for 35mm can also be used. The single view Soviet 35mm VF has a protruding back and is quite bulky, but those made from others are quite compact.
And if you're handy with tools, you can even build a compact VF for your Zorki, using discarded VFs from disposable/single-use cameras. A lot of these had VFs with 35mm or so fields.