It's time to replace the carry around camera

Louis_Dobson wrote:

Dr Hal wrote:

Go to website www.clearviewer.com . It is easy to use, inexpensive, and small. I have been using one for years.

Hal

It appears to be a magnifying glass. What's it for?

You cannot focus an eye on an lcd like an evf without a glass focusing aid.  Therefore the lens-on-a-stick idea is merely to allow your eye to get close enough to the lcd to use it as a viewfinder.

There are bulky enclosed loupes that do much the same thing.

The Clearviewer style is a simpler version of much the same thing.

The idea is basically that on a bright light day your eye pupils naturally contract to the ambient light. Once this happens your eyes cannot read the lcd as it does not put out enough light to compensate.  If your eyes could get close enough to focus on the lcd alone they will adjust to the light that comes off the lcd.  The idea of these devices is to allow your eye to come close enough to the lcd to shut out most of the ambient light so that they can adjust.  It works and the eye to viewfinder suddenly finds the lcd quite readable. (Just like "magic").

This points out the commonly held fantasy - that reflected glare causes the lcd to wash-out.  The reflections are still there but are found to be only a very small part of the problem.  A full covering loupe will certainly shut out reflected glare as well but comes with the baggage of monstrous size and inconvenience.  The lens-on-a-stick cancels the main ambient light problem and the glare can be pretty well eliminated by a hat brim or a suitably placed spare hand - but the small residual glare does not worry me as much as it might worry a perfectionist.  But as you are going whole-hog with the GM5 and inbuilt evf such useful devices are not a real concern.

The real reason I don't like the Clearviewer myself is not because it is not a useful device (it is) but that it is semi-permanently mounted on the tripod mount and folds up when not in use - this turns into quite a lot of extra baggage on what is supposed to be a very cmpact camera body.  My home-made version is magnetically attached and clips on and off in a second when needed and folds into a very small package when demounted.  Therefore I only need mount it when it is useful - which is surprisingly often.

The side benefit of one of these devices is that it encourages using a camera "normally" with eye to finder stance supporting lens with left hand rather than waving it about in front of your face.