Viewfinder magnification discrepancy

[NathanJD]

I’m about to ask a question that has been asked before, although I haven’t seen an answer that really satisfies my curiosity.

As per my last post, I have a FED 2 (with 52mm Industar 26) and a Zorki-4K (with 50mm Jupiter 8), and they both have different magnifications through the Viewfinder despite both having near enough 50mm lenses. Also, neither of them have frame lines in the viewfinder.

There fore, does anyone know if I’m seeing more through the viewfinder of the FED than the film will record, or less through the Zorki, or possibly even both with the fitted lenses?

I guess it’s possibly just another thing to ‘get used to’ just like guessing exposure manually unless I want an extra piece of kit to add on to the body there fore lengthening the time it takes to set up to shoot. It doesn’t bug me that I may have to become proficient at guessing these things anyway – in fact it’s one of the larger parts of the appeal 😉

 

[januaryman]

Great advise for anyone framing a shot with any rangefinder - leave extra room. I framed this (below) just the way I wanted on my Canonet and still came up short when the film was developed, cutting off the cart from either side. So don't cut it too close, like I did.

 

[NathanJD]

That's cool 🙂 I’m happy to know that there isn't something I’m not doing! I’ll be leaving room as you all say and try and learn the rough framing for both cameras.

These babies are truly a joy to use without auto this and auto that! I took my D200 out on the weekend and ended up frustrated at all the shots I missed because of the thinking it was trying to do for me!!

 

[payasam]

When composing a frame which has near objects in it, it makes sense to discount the top and left edges of the finder image. Aiming the camera a little upwards and to the left amounts to manual parallax compensation.

 

[kievman]

I have much better luck framing with my Kievs then my Feds, It seems to me the viewfinders on the kievs is more accurate than the feds or zorkis, No frameline on the kievs, but mine seem to show close to 100 percent, I have compared actural field of view with my Nikon F3 with a 50 mm lens (99.8% actual field of view) and my Kievs viewfinder and they are very close in what both cameras show in the viewfinder. just my 2 cents - Michael