Suggest a Digital SLR for a lefty

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bgb

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Hi,

I'm considering a digital slr and I'm open to which ones I look at as I have no allegiances to any brand at all.

I have to shoot with my left eye and so i was looking for advice from left eyed shooters as to which SLR they have found to be the most comfortable.

Have been reading stuff on the web about accidentally changing settings with the nose and getting the thumb in the eye ... not fun, I don't care if the rear screen gets a little oily.

I found my Nikon F80 to be a bit [ok a lot] awkward yet my Nikon F is fine ... go figure:bang:

I have tried a Fuji X100 and while it's not an SLR it was ok to use ... so maybe something like a X-Pro might also be an option. The lack of long lenses would be a bit of a drawback but I might be prepared to adapt. I recently looked through my old images and was surprised how many were taken with a zoom lens ... most of them!

Cheers,

Brian
 
I'm a left eye shooter and (personally) never had an issue with any Nikon SLR. I have a D4 and a D800, and they work fine for me. D700 is also good. And if full frame isn't important, the D200/D300 are both fine.
 
I'm a left eye shooter, and have never had problems with any of the Nikon cameras I've ever owned (FE, FE-2, FM, F2, FA, S3, SP rangefinders, N65) except for the minor inconvenience of a film advance lever which has to stand off to activate the meter.
It is what it is, and one simply learns to adapt, which is what we left-eyed, left-handed people do in this predominantly right-eyed, right-handed world.
 
Left eyed here too.

I have never had any problems with any cameras. It just is what it is. I have to live with some nose smudge on the back screen, that's all.
 
bgb said:
I have to shoot with my left eye and so i was looking for advice from left eyed shooters as to which SLR they have found to be the most comfortable.
Click to expand...

Going by my experience, no difference, really - as far as DSLRs go. On film SLRs, if you insist on keeping the camera on-eye all the time, a motor is of course advisable (right-eyed users can cock bigger manual transport cameras without putting them down). Unless you opt for the Alpa (transport lever going outwards) or Exakta (lever on the left), but both have enough highly unergonomic quirks to make a left/right distinction entirely irrelevant.

All makers pro models seem to rely on right hand thumb control ever since the later AF age (a trend that now has extended to pretty much every DSLR), so these are a bit worse to use as you may accidentally press the cursor buttons with the face - but you'll learn to avoid that...

A bit more interesting is the question which cameras might be suitable for single left handed use - the last time I had RSI in my (right) mouse hand I found just about every of my cameras to be dependent on the right hand for at least some operations...
 
I'm very strongly left eyed, and I get frustrated by nose smudge. Now there are touch screens, heaven only knows what I could be setting with my proboscis. One reason I selected the Canon G11 was because I could fold away the screen to use the (frankly poky) OVF, but it didn't work out that way much.

I think us lefties just have to chalk it up as one more of those things we should get on and deal with, sadly.
 
Rodchenko said:
I'm very strongly left eyed, and I get frustrated by nose smudge. Now there are touch screens, heaven only knows what I could be setting with my proboscis.
Click to expand...

All touch screens on cameras I've used needed some kind of (button) activation - these tend to be all across the back, so they would not be safe from right-eyed shooters either. But it took me a few weeks to avoid the F5 cursor keys - for the first few films the AF point always ended up at the left margin.
 
As a left-eyed shooter I also have problems with nose smudge.

I now use a Panasonic G1 m4/3 with its flippable screen. I don't care about instantaneous feedback so I keep it in the closed position. Works for me...
 
anything with an articulated screen would do.

mirrorless cameras with an accessory evf are also good for avoiding smudged screens. just a suggestion.
 
I think I will need to do lots of adapting then ... My sister has always been left eyed and left handed and she seems to be able to cope with the always right handed world. I'm more right handed heading towards being ambidextrous but an accident has meant it's left eye only from now on.

I have read somewhere that having an eye cup on the camera moves the face away from the rear screen and I guess that means fewer buttons pushed by the nose.

Never considered an articulated screen it' something I will have to have a good look at.

Thanks for the comments folks 😀
 
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