Weekend!

I sent my Nikon D70 back to the shop for repairs, so it’s all film now. One thing I’ve realized over the past few months is that I HATE holding a camera a foot and a half from my face trying to see a little LCD viewscreen. Give me a nice bright viewfinder any time.

My Canon has a dinky little viewfinder, but it’s not parallax adjusted, and doesn’t show anything near what ends up on the jpeg. I think it’s there in case you absolutely, POSITIVELY can’t see through the LCD.

The Nikon D70 has a nice, albeit small-ish real viewfinder. I wonder if they use the prism from the N65, which is a mirror prism. The rest of the camera is all N80, which uses a bigger, brighter (and heavier) glass prism.

To get a *real* viewfinder, you have to go back a few years. My Canon AE-1, FTb, and Canonet have huge, bright viewfinders. The SLRs have a big honkin’ prism, the Canonet has a big bright gallilean viewfinder. The Canonet is nice because you can see what’s beyond the actual scene, and framelines show where the boundaries are.

My <a href=http://www.kataan.org/techref/canonet.html>Canonet</a> passed a neat experiment. I’ve been trying different ways to emulate an old Mercury battery, which are understandably toxic and aren’t available in the US. I shot a roll with a silver-oxide battery (available anywhere) and the pictures look pretty good. That rocks, the Canonet is a great shooter, but battery hassles made me think twice about using it.