ChrisR
I'm a well known grump...
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As you probably know, I mostly shoot with a Pentax MX, which has a fixed prism viewfinder*. It's a great viewfinder, and most of the time I'm very happy with it. However, I occasionally find I want a low (or high) viewpoint, and at my stage of decrepitude kneeling or lying on (damp, nay wet) ground is not desirable (or even really possible... it's not the lying down, it's the getting up again ). But it struck me that all SLRs have one thing in common: they all provide a little window to view the image through. Presumably the light from distant points comes out parallel, ie at infinity (maybe the light from closer points does, too; I don't remember a real sense of depth in my viewfinder).
Are there any add-on chimney or angle viewfinders? If you added one mirror you'd effectively get a small waist-level finder, presumably with the left-right inversion (and maybe an up-down inversion, I can't quite visualise); not ideal but workable.
I also wondered about a gadget that would clip over the VF that you could slot a smart phone into, and use it's camera to view the viewfinder. You could couple that with an app to do any inversions for you.
Either of these could probably be made (if at all) with enough flexibility to fit on a number of SLRs. I'm thinking mainly about an aid to framing for compositional purposes, rather than a focus aid. I'm guessing it would be hard to judge critical focus, and it may have to be focused by other means...
*If I had shelled out the £150 or so for a Pentax LX I could spend another Lord knows how much for a replacement chimney finder, which might do the job...
Are there any add-on chimney or angle viewfinders? If you added one mirror you'd effectively get a small waist-level finder, presumably with the left-right inversion (and maybe an up-down inversion, I can't quite visualise); not ideal but workable.
I also wondered about a gadget that would clip over the VF that you could slot a smart phone into, and use it's camera to view the viewfinder. You could couple that with an app to do any inversions for you.
Either of these could probably be made (if at all) with enough flexibility to fit on a number of SLRs. I'm thinking mainly about an aid to framing for compositional purposes, rather than a focus aid. I'm guessing it would be hard to judge critical focus, and it may have to be focused by other means...
*If I had shelled out the £150 or so for a Pentax LX I could spend another Lord knows how much for a replacement chimney finder, which might do the job...