Bob B said:
Okay so I'm totally green and embarrassed about this.
I went and got a 50mm 1.5 CV Nokton lens for my Bessa R. Since there were lines for a 50mm I assumed it would work without an external viewfinder. I was both surprised and dissapointed that the bottom right corner of my big, beuatiful, clear viewfinder image gets blocked by the lens. I mean, part of my one week-old love affair with the camera is due to it's spacious viewfinder. Now to get shots with a 50mm, I kinda have to guess what's going to be in the frame. I really don't want any external vf just now.
I suppose I'll get used to this, but it seems weird. I'm curious how others have compensated for not seeing the entire photo in advance, (other than getting an SLR.) The guy at the camera store explained how many "real life" photographers have taken many famous photos with some of the VF blocked by the lens barrel.
Note, fellow RFFers, that he's not complaining so much about framing imprecision as about finder blockage. And yes, that IS something we all have to get used to -- at least, those of us who use fat, wide-aperture lenses.
What to do about it? I guess I've never really thought consciously about how I adjust. For a static scene, it isn't too hard to look at the composition with the camera away from your eye, then frame it using the visible parts as a reference and just remembering what was in the part that's now blocked by the lens.
For action shooting, it can be quite a bit tougher. That's one area in which cameras with 1:1 viewfinders -- such as the Canon VI and P, the Nikon S2, the Bessa R3a and the Epson R-D 1 -- have a big advantage: you can keep both eyes open, and the eye away from the finder sort of "fills in" the part of the image you can't see through the finder.
(The human brain is an amazing thing that way. Do you realize that you have a fairly large area where the optic nerve attaches, almost smack in the middle of your eye's retina, where you are absolutely stone blind? You're not consciously aware of this "blind spot" because the brain keeps track of what it sees and "fills in the blanks." As Leon Lederman observes in his book 'The God Particle,' we're able to juggle flaming torches and drive 100 mph on the autobahn even though a fair portion of what we think we see is really nothing more than a good guess.)
So if finder blockage still drives you crazy, what can you do? Well, one option is to get a skinnier and/or shorter lens. Want to swap your Nokton for a nice, svelte Canon 50mm f/1.8? I've got one to trade, and I'd like to have a Nokton -- but you'd be getting the short end of the stick financially, so I suggest you pass on this particular offer. Still, going to a less-obstructive lens -- which typically will be of slightly smaller maximum aperture and/or shorter focal length -- usually will reduce or eliminate finder blockage. I don't have a Bessa R anymore, but I do have an R2, which I believe is similar in finder architecture; the Canon 50/1.8 doesn't intrude into the 50mm frameline
at all, even at its closest focusing distance.
So if you like wide-aperture lenses, finder blockage is something you just may have to learn to live with. If you can't live with it, you can avoid it by choosing your lenses carefully. If this is a big issue for you, you'll need to resign yourself to a 'try before you buy' policy to make sure the lenses you pick won't block the finder more than you can tolerate.
Finally, if it makes you feel any better, there are plenty of lens/camera combinations more sorely obstructed than yours. I'm attaching a picture taken through the viewfinder of my Canon 7s, with the 50mm f/0.95 lens mounted. Note that this honker blocks almost a THIRD of the 50mm frame -- and yes, I've taken shots in which totally unexpected objects are rearing up from the "dead zone" I couldn't see!
