ok so no one wanted to talk about which is the brightest and least distorted finder

I admit it was a bit of a trick question but I have been thinking a lot lately about the new Panasonic gf1 with the f1.7 pancake lens and the Leica x1 with a fixed lens and the new ricoh with a prime.

There has been lots of posts regarding how good or not any of these well be for so called "street shooting" I think I have come up with an almost ideal finder for the job which is this one. It obviously has by far the clearest image with zero distortion. It can easily be designed to compensate for the changes in framing size from near to far focus . its low light performance is stellar probably about the best there is. It can also be quite cheap. And for the Leica set obsessing bout how much they can see outside the frame this will blow their collective socks off. There are lots of different versions of this finder but its really a very simple finder you could construct quite easily yourself.

In the old old days we called these sports finders and they offer by far the best ability to track and follow action in the finder for obvious reasons.

Are there any negatives to using one of these on your X1, GF! or pick a camera with a fixed lens? not that I can think of. They could even be used with a zoom lens camera where the zoom have focal length markings that are reasonably accurate. The finder can also easily be made to accommodate a range of focal lenghts

About the only minus I can think of it it will stick out some from the camera and need to be folded up or removed when the camera is put away.

This finder in an auto focus camera would be useful for just about any kind of photography all it needs is a dot in the center to locate the focus point.
here is a simple cheap one
http://digital-lifestyles.info/2007/04/04/ikodot-sports-finder-for-cameras/
here is a relatively expensive one for the Leica precision freaks to obsess over

there are many many other styles but I think take a Leica x1 or the Panasonic Gf1 with the pancake lens pre set a usable aperture and indicated hyper focal distance setting and you could have a very
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bosjohn aka John Shick [email protected]

There's a reason that "sports finders" aren't common or popular. Aligning two wire frames (or whatever equivalent) involves careful camera positioning for parallax and it shows only framing — nothing related to focus, exposure, depth of field, or the wide array of information that an optical or EVF finder can provide. It's also not linked to zooming so it's either for a fixed focal length or has to be manually adjusted.

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BJ Nicholls
SLC, UT

BJN said:

There's a reason that "sports finders" aren't common or popular. Aligning two wire frames (or whatever equivalent) involves careful camera positioning for parallax and it shows only framing — nothing related to focus, exposure, depth of field, or the wide array of information that an optical or EVF finder can provide. It's also not linked to zooming so it's either for a fixed focal length or has to be manually adjusted.

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BJ Nicholls
SLC, UT

Click to expand...

thats why I proposed using it with auto focus and I don't need that information for fast street shooting if I stop to read the information I will have missed the shot. As far as the alignment goes its no more or less critical than any other shoe mounted finder. Obviously it needs manual adjustment but for a non zoom lens you only need adjust it once.

Parallax is a problem for both optical shoe mounted finders and sports finders and is addressed in the same way. However I should point out parallax is not an issue in the shooting distances normally encountered in street.

No solution is perfect but I submit that this is perhaps the best finder for street shooting with a fixed focal length lens.
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bosjohn aka John Shick [email protected]

bosjohn said:

take a Leica x1 or the Panasonic Gf1

Click to expand...

For the very reason that you have mentioned. No viewfinder.
Real cameras have 'em.
Try a Sony 900 for a nice bright view of the world,
the days of hanging twenty gadgets
off a camera to get it to work are over.
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Ron Poelman said:

bosjohn said:

take a Leica x1 or the Panasonic Gf1

Click to expand...

For the very reason that you have mentioned. No viewfinder.
Real cameras have 'em.
Try a Sony 900 for a nice bright view of the world,
the days of hanging twenty gadgets
off a camera to get it to work are over.
--

Click to expand...

hmmm well now I think not outfitted with the finder I have described I think either one could be formidable as a street shooter where getting the camera up aimed and shot is critical. That is the premiss of my original post that is using the wire finder with one of these or some other camera as a formidable street machine. I have no idea how much street shooting you have done. If you have then you will understand how important quick reaction time is and how much less obtrusive you will be if the dang camera isn't glued to your eye all the time.

I fully agree a finder is better than no finder however both cameras have offered to my mind sensible options for finders. that is the accessory shoe. I can choose my own finder, the one that will work best for me rather than accept some one size fits all squinty less than adequate built in finder.

If for instance Leica were to put a finder only as good as the one in the Cl into the x1 the price would double and the size would get half again as big. Good finders need space. for a lot less space you could use a finder like in the Canon Power shot G 11 but I find that barely better than a joke though much better than the lcd on the back.

There is nothing I know of faster to frame with and better to follow moving action with than a finder who's edges you can see around and in the case of a wire or sports finder you can keep both eyes open comfortably without eye strain. One only needs to read countless threads in the leica forum of those who obsess about seeing outside the frame lines. Well with the wire finder you can multiply that capability ten fold. You can also see far more clearly nuances of expression a subtleties of color and a host of other things obscured by low magnification of all but a very few of the best optical finder and really obscured by ground glass.

In terms of low light there is nothing even remotely close. Even the evf's that look so bright start to look all grainy and jumpy in low light.

Think about it for a moment, How much information do you really need in the finder. if your shooting in manual you already know what the shutter speed iso and aperture are set to. Do you really need to know, when street shooting, the aperture chosen for aperture preferred automation. So let me guess your out there shooting the quickly changing dynamics of interplay of people with their surroundings and you gonna spend precious time reading the info in the finder while the shot is long gone?

For the auto focus its a no brainer to suspend a little black dot in the center of the wire finder.

but if you insist on glass in your finder before you will consider it real how about his one?

http://cgi.ebay.com/Leitz-Leica-SBOOI-Bright-Line-Finder-50mm-5cm-M3-IIIg_W0QQitemZ120491070351QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item1c0dd3d38f

This finder gives a a magnification of 1.00 and is supurb. For down and dirty fast street even though its a fifty instead of a forty for the panasonic or 35 for the Leica it will work just fine.

also cosina makes a splendid 35mm finder howerver its not one to one but far better than anything your gonna find built into a small camera.

http://www.cameraquest.com/voigtacc.htm scroll down toward the bottom of the page to find the 35mm bright line finder. I have one of these finders and its supurb and you will not find a better one built into any camera including the M8 or 9

So I think Leica and panasonic and others have the right idea. Give me the small camera with great lens and sensor and let me put the best finder for my needs and style of shooting on it. Would you not agree that this is a much more flexible approach?

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bosjohn aka John Shick [email protected]

and no fresh air add-on is going to come close to approximating that.
Both these esteemed companies failed to produce viewfinders
because that was in the too hard basket.
Even a mini prism aimed at the top left corner
would have absolutely made these things legend.
But, why produce something great when we can market this ?
Understandable in the case of Panasonic, laughable in the case of Leica.
No, when Pentax gave the world an affordable prism,
they transformed photography for 50 years; going backwards, I just don't see.
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Ron Poelman said:

and no fresh air add-on is going to come close to approximating that.
Both these esteemed companies failed to produce viewfinders
because that was in the too hard basket.
Even a mini prism aimed at the top left corner
would have absolutely made these things legend.
But, why produce something great when we can market this ?
Understandable in the case of Panasonic, laughable in the case of Leica.
No, when Pentax gave the world an affordable prism,
they transformed photography for 50 years; going backwards, I just don't see.
--

Click to expand...

if your married to the prism so be it but others are not. If you want the leica with the finder built you will need the m8 or m9 as I mentioned leica could easily have put a finder in the camera but the price would have doubled and the camera would get bigger. In the M7 and Mp the optical finder you don't care for represents about a third of the cost of making the camera. Even without the range finder a quality optical finder is expensive.

a prism big enough to get a decent view would give you an r 9 what other alternatives can you suggest after getting past the disappointment. I suggested to you that I would rather choose and use the best optical or wire finder I can find then to have Leica or panasonic give me some really low mag finder that is diffacult at best to see through.

What made the Pentax such a hit was not the pentiprism Zeiss and others were already making slrs with pentiprisms. It was the quick return mirror and ttl metering. They predated the nikon f which also had the quick return mirror and the legendary f1.4 nikor fifty mm and the rest as they say is history

But if you want pocketable or almost pocketable forget the prism. YOu could use mirrors but the image is kinda dim. So your choices for small cameras is allow the user to choose a really good finder or equip it with a less than good finder and charge more for it. Do you like that idea?
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bosjohn aka John Shick [email protected]

bosjohn said:

leica could easily have put a finder in the camera but the price
would have doubled and the camera would get bigger.

Click to expand...

Since when has any Leica owner worried about price?
Nope, Leica piked out, so much for "the cutting edge".

bosjohn said:

What made the Pentax such a hit was not the pentiprism Zeiss and others were already making slrs with pentiprisms.

Click to expand...

No, it was the bang for bucks. Pentaprism cameras were super pricey.

bosjohn said:

So your choices for small cameras is allow the user to choose a really good finder or equip it with a less than good finder and charge more for it. Do you like that idea?

Click to expand...

No, and "almost pocketable" is a pointless contradiction in terms.
I'll wait for the 5mp in 15mm screen EVF model.
That's what they should have been striving for !

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Ron Poelman said:

bosjohn said:

leica could easily have put a finder in the camera but the price
would have doubled and the camera would get bigger.

Click to expand...

Since when has any Leica owner worried about price?
Nope, Leica piked out, so much for "the cutting edge".

Ron Poelman said:

What made the Pentax such a hit was not the pentiprism Zeiss and others were already making slrs with pentiprisms.

Click to expand...

No, it was the bang for bucks. Pentaprism cameras were super pricey.

Ron Poelman said:

So your choices for small cameras is allow the user to choose a really good finder or equip it with a less than good finder and charge more for it. Do you like that idea?

Click to expand...

No, and "almost pocketable" is a pointless contradiction in terms.
I'll wait for the 5mp in 15mm screen EVF model.
That's what they should have been striving for !

--

Click to expand...

Well Leica like any other company prices their products so as to generate as much income as possible but not kill sales. A complicated decision which I rather Leica weighed the options of built in finder or not. Good optical finders as I mentioned aren't cheap. If the x1 came in at 3000 instead of two I think leica felt it wouldn't sell. If they made what everyone wanted that is a smaller cheaper camera using the same lenses, the old cl gets tossed around as a model, they would then have a camera somewhere in the high fours or low five thousands. That would kill off theM. Maybe not a bad thing who knows.

Dslrs just like any do everything devices from the swiss army knife to multi function wood working tools do lots of things rather well but only a few are the the best choice for.

Street shooting is one that dslrs are not so suited for. I know lots of folk do use dslrs for street and get great photos but its kinda like playing the goldberg variations on the piano. YOu can do it but its much more suited to a two manual harpsichord.

Aside from all the problems people talk abut related to blending in etc is the reflex it self. It super for lots of general work but its tunnel vision makes following activity with it diffacult. Some lens choices and prisms will allow you to keep your left eye open comfortably but not many and the eye piece on most dslrs is much closer to the center of the camera than on say the Leica M.

So getting back to my original idea that is a camera like the panasonic gf1 or Leica x1 or the new offering from Ricoh and some others say the lx3 or canon power shot g11. Any of these cameras set to a single focal length and with a wire finder sigh or even a good optical finder will be a very formidable street machine.

Small unobtrusive and with manual focus presets extremely fast to operate. Even with auto focus they can be very fast.

Anyway we appear not able to agree hope we can hear from some other views as always I respect other positions even if I don't agree )
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bosjohn aka John Shick [email protected]

Ron Poelman said:

No, and "almost pocketable" is a pointless contradiction in terms.
I'll wait for the 5mp in 15mm screen EVF model.
That's what they should have been striving for !

--

Click to expand...

Sorry I forgot. One mans pocketable may be another mans monster. What standard for pocketable should we use. If its a photo vest any of these cameras could be swallowed up with room to spare. a watch pocket on the other hand hmmmm well you know. Sorry I was unclear and used the phrase almost pocketable which you are correct to point out is a bit of an oxymoron
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bosjohn aka John Shick [email protected]

bosjohn said:

I fully agree a finder is better than no finder however both cameras have offered to my mind sensible options for finders. that is the accessory shoe. I can choose my own finder, the one that will work best for me rather than accept some one size fits all squinty less than adequate built in finder.

Click to expand...

An accessory shoe is a place to put a flash -- not a place to put a finder. There is no accessory shoe that I have ever seen that has brought up the light from the "through the lens" path, to support an external OVF. Likewise, although it is easier to imagine an EVIL or Live View camera exporting a video "viewfinder display", I have not heard of anyone using a flash hot shoe as the interface of choice for that purpose.

bosjohn said:

So I think Leica and panasonic and others have the right idea. Give me the small camera with great lens and sensor and let me put the best finder for my needs and style of shooting on it. Would you not agree that this is a much more flexible approach?

Click to expand...

No, because this "flexible approach" doesn't support good OVFs or (probably) EVFs (here, for a moment, I'm assuming the time will eventually come when there are good EVFs). It sounds like it just supports finders that are disconnected from things like an accurate view of what the camera is seeing through the interchangeable lens.

So if I understand things correctly, it's not really "more flexible".

bosjohn said:

Ron Poelman said:

No, when Pentax gave the world an affordable prism,
they transformed photography for 50 years; going backwards, I just don't see.

Click to expand...

if your married to the prism so be it but others are not.

Click to expand...

Even the EVIL followers are married to the idea of the viewfinder (or other display) showing an image based on the light that is coming through the lens. Prisms first gave us TTL capability, and EVFs may one day get good enough to displace them, but technologies that promise to strip TTL capability from SLRs or their equivalents are not particularly useful.

bosjohn said:

leica could easily have put a finder in the camera but the price would have doubled

Click to expand...

Lame. Canon and Nikon put viewfinders in cameras that cost far less than the ones Leica sells -- and neither Canon or Nikon are charities. Would you accept delivery of a new Mercedes that lacked a clear glass windshield because "putting in an actual glass windshield would have cost more than installing an opaque piece of plastic"?

bosjohn said:

and the camera would get bigger.

Click to expand...

And once you install an external finder in the flash shoe, the whole package doesn't get bigger? (Keeping a protruding wire finder from getting bent by other items in a camera bag might also be an "interesting" exercise.)

bosjohn said:

I suggested to you that I would rather choose and use the best optical or wire finder I can find

Click to expand...

How good can an external optical finder be, if it has no access to the light coming through the lens?

bosjohn said:

But if you want pocketable or almost pocketable forget the prism. YOu could use mirrors but the image is kinda dim. So your choices for small cameras is allow the user to choose a really good finder or equip it with a less than good finder and charge more for it. Do you like that idea?

Click to expand...

I prefer an OVF with a true TTL (SLR) arrangement. But failing that, I'd rather have one of the better EVFs (900,000+ pixels) than to be stuck with wire frames.

I am fully aware of and use prism finders on a regular basis they are unbeatable for long longer and longest lenses but are not so good for "street" Its nothing to do with size here its to tunnel vision effect, as for me to be effective in shooting the street style I need to see a lot more than just whats in the finder and I also need to be able to see far more detail in the finder than the slr finder can provide with shorter lenses.

My original post in this thread posits the a sports finder mounted on the newer breed of compact cameras will make a very fine camera for so called street.

There is no doubt you can use a dslr for street but its not really the right tool for the job or at least thats the general consensus. I could also use a high quality optical finder but I think the wire finder has some advantages not the least of which it is easily customized for my own way of shooting.

As for the optical zoom finders found in the canon and a few surviving other p and s cameras they are little more than a joke as far as I am concerned however I do agree they are far better than the lcd on the back.

If leica were to put a finder in the x1 it would be most similar to the old screw mt leicas. would you wanna be stuck with that? I am a little surprised that on the one had you are all for the high quality of the better prism finders but seem to think the poor quality optical finders supplied by canon are worthy of a Leica.
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bosjohn aka John Shick [email protected]

Tom_N said:

bosjohn wrote:

An accessory shoe is a place to put a flash -- not a place to put a finder. There is no accessory shoe that I have ever seen that has brought up the light from the "through the lens" path, to support an external OVF. Likewise, although it is easier to imagine an EVIL or Live View camera exporting a video "viewfinder display", I have not heard of anyone using a flash hot shoe as the interface of choice for that purpose.

Click to expand...

I

you really mean reflex finder an optical viewfinder is one that uses optical glass. I know many here refer to the reflex finder as an ovf but its sloppy parlance. A Leica m has an optical finder.

as to your remark about the accessory shoe being for flash that is historically inaccurate. Leica introduced the accessory shoe for the express and exact purpose of mounting view finders and range finders. Early Leicas with interchangeable lenses had no frame lines and needed accessory shoe mounted finders. It was many many years later it was discovered that it was also a convenient place for a flash. Even now when using lenses like the 21mm on the M8 or M9 you will need an accessory finder. See my other posts here regarding why a prism or reflex finder is not ideal for "street"
see this page. http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlosriverasegovia/3376275250/

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bosjohn aka John Shick [email protected]

Tom_N said:

bosjohn said:

I fully agree a finder is better than no finder however both cameras have offered to my mind sensible options for finders. that is the accessory shoe. I can choose my own finder, the one that will work best for me rather than accept some one size fits all squinty less than adequate built in finder.

Click to expand...

An accessory shoe is a place to put a flash -- not a place to put a finder. There is no accessory shoe that I have ever seen that has brought up the light from the "through the lens" path, to support an external OVF. Likewise, although it is easier to imagine an EVIL or Live View camera exporting a video "viewfinder display", I have not heard of anyone using a flash hot shoe as the interface of choice for that purpose.

Click to expand...

Have you not heard about the Ricoh GX100 and GX200?
What about the Panasonic GF1?
Or, the Olympus EP2?

At least four (4) live-view cameras with a hotshoe which doubles as the video port for an accessory EVF.