mooge
Well-known
How to make your own brightline finder!
EJ Lee
11-28-10
So. I was given a bunch of camera 'junk' a while back. I'll save that story for some other time. Anyways, there were two cameras in the bag- a Minolta SLR and a Minolta Freedom 35AF point-n-shoot I found later. It's actually pretty cool- it has a nice finder and it's pretty compact and stuff. I thought maybe I'd use it just for kicks, but when I put batteries in it, nothing would work. Some lights would turn on and off and that was about it. Yesterday, I decided to poke around inside, and I got zapped once, and accidently shorted the capacitor, which was pretty full, with a screwdriver. The resulting sound was loud enough to convince me not to mess with that camera for the rest of the night.
Today, I found a bit of wood I shaped so that it fits in an acessory shoe, and figured I could cut out the finder and use it as an acessory finder for my camera. Which is hilarious because I'm going to put this on my M2, which has a 35 frame built in, and I don't even have a 35mm lens... for ANY of my cameras. But whatever, it'll look cool.
The Freedom 35AF is a pretty good candidate for this hack- the finder is okay-big, quite bright (but very blue-tinted) and has brightlines with parallax correction marks. And the camera's dead- it'll be tossed anyways, so why not re-use the bits we can?
I took the finder assembly out, and cut out the finder itself with a Dremel tool , and filed the edges so it was kinda neat looking (good enough) and then worked on the base. I made this one out of oak a long time ago in a period of boredom. Attention needs to be paid to the top surfaces of the rails- that determines the level-ness of the base and the the width of the base- if it's just wide enough, it'll stick well in the shoe but not be too tight.
The base now needs to be attached to the finder. I drilled two holes in the finder between the two rear elements, and used screws from the camera body. You can't see the screw heads through the finder.
Next, the finder needs to be cleaned, or mine did. Be careful- it's easy to scratch the lens with the frame lines on it. Last thing was to cover the finder in aluminum tape so it would look less like rubbish, and the fix the alignment of the shoe (levelness and fit) by 'shimming' it with tape.
And that's it. An acessory finder for peanuts- all you need is the tools, a dead or worthless camera with an okay finder, and a couple hours. If you're using it with a Leica, make sure you give it a nonsensical five-letter name. I think mine's going to be called the LOUSY.
LOUSY 35mm viewfinder by rokka~!, on Flickr
cheers.
I see that Jay Javier's done a write up too...
EJ Lee
11-28-10
So. I was given a bunch of camera 'junk' a while back. I'll save that story for some other time. Anyways, there were two cameras in the bag- a Minolta SLR and a Minolta Freedom 35AF point-n-shoot I found later. It's actually pretty cool- it has a nice finder and it's pretty compact and stuff. I thought maybe I'd use it just for kicks, but when I put batteries in it, nothing would work. Some lights would turn on and off and that was about it. Yesterday, I decided to poke around inside, and I got zapped once, and accidently shorted the capacitor, which was pretty full, with a screwdriver. The resulting sound was loud enough to convince me not to mess with that camera for the rest of the night.
Today, I found a bit of wood I shaped so that it fits in an acessory shoe, and figured I could cut out the finder and use it as an acessory finder for my camera. Which is hilarious because I'm going to put this on my M2, which has a 35 frame built in, and I don't even have a 35mm lens... for ANY of my cameras. But whatever, it'll look cool.
The Freedom 35AF is a pretty good candidate for this hack- the finder is okay-big, quite bright (but very blue-tinted) and has brightlines with parallax correction marks. And the camera's dead- it'll be tossed anyways, so why not re-use the bits we can?
I took the finder assembly out, and cut out the finder itself with a Dremel tool , and filed the edges so it was kinda neat looking (good enough) and then worked on the base. I made this one out of oak a long time ago in a period of boredom. Attention needs to be paid to the top surfaces of the rails- that determines the level-ness of the base and the the width of the base- if it's just wide enough, it'll stick well in the shoe but not be too tight.
The base now needs to be attached to the finder. I drilled two holes in the finder between the two rear elements, and used screws from the camera body. You can't see the screw heads through the finder.
Next, the finder needs to be cleaned, or mine did. Be careful- it's easy to scratch the lens with the frame lines on it. Last thing was to cover the finder in aluminum tape so it would look less like rubbish, and the fix the alignment of the shoe (levelness and fit) by 'shimming' it with tape.
And that's it. An acessory finder for peanuts- all you need is the tools, a dead or worthless camera with an okay finder, and a couple hours. If you're using it with a Leica, make sure you give it a nonsensical five-letter name. I think mine's going to be called the LOUSY.
LOUSY 35mm viewfinder by rokka~!, on Flickr
cheers.
I see that Jay Javier's done a write up too...
