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NEED for a more accurate viewfinder...


badpets

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I just made a trip to India and I realized how important it's to have an accurate viewfinder. Many of my images taken with M8 turn out to be kinda ruined by bad framing due to the inaccurate viewfinder frame-lines. Should I upgrade my viewfinder or just buy an external viewfinder??? I need advice... thank in advance ...

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Or just learn to live with it by trying to get a little more in the frame than you need.. ie take one or two steps backwards. Then do final adjustments to your framing in post by cropping ever so slightly. Much cheaper and always 100% accurate. Naturally you'll lose a couple of pixels but nothing significant..

 

//Juha

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Or get an external viewfinder for your most important lens.....or a variable finder that you can set to show the correct frame at whatever distance you shoot - I have the 21-24-28 Leica finder and know where to set it for each of my lenses (hint: for accurate representation none of them are set at the "correct" focal length)

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The standard M8 frames may not be too precise at longer distances, but the GOOD thing is, that you will always get more in the picture and not less than you had framed for. This means that you can always crop out any excess image. It may be a pain to have to do this, but this is much better than losing image area that you thought was in-frame. As others have mentioned, with a little practise one soon learns how much extra to allow for if you want tighter framing straight out of the camera. :)

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Unfortunately it is not an issue. RF framelines can only be accurate at one distance - and it is up to the user to learn how to correct according to focal length and shooting distance. If that does not work for you, there has been a system on the market for some years that does not have this effect: the SLR.

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The standard M8 frames may not be too precise at longer distances, but the GOOD thing is, that you will always get more in the picture and not less than you had framed for. This means that you can always crop out any excess image. It may be a pain to have to do this, but this is much better than losing image area that you thought was in-frame. As others have mentioned, with a little practise one soon learns how much extra to allow for if you want tighter framing straight out of the camera. :)

Exactly, Nicole - which makes it hard to imagine why an image would be ruined by bad framing by the camera.

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Exactly, Nicole - which makes it hard to imagine why an image would be ruined by bad framing by the camera.

 

I could imagine the cause of the "issue"...

I used to frame the scene with the lens set on infinity. Then I focused the object which often was much closer and I did not notice that the frame moved to the lower right for parallax adjustment.:o

This sounds stupid, but it took me quite a long time to get over it when I started with the M6.

 

So I don't want to imply that the original poster makes the same mistake as I did, but the easiest way to learn is using the display of the M8 to controle your results for framing, exposure etc. immediately after you took the picture.

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Never thought of that possibility...:(

 

When I look at some photos now where I made the mistake, I have to smile. Though at the time when I didn't realize what I did wrong, I thought the whole Leica-M-System was rubbish. What puzzled me most was that it only happened with 50mm - never with 90 or 35. No wonder, as the frames weren't as "natural" as those for 50mm, I took notice of their movement.:rolleyes:

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thanks for your responses tho they cant ultimately resolve the issue for me ...

 

Could you perhaps post a couple of examples, and explain what your framing problems are? This should enable us to offer better, or more specific advice. :)

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The accuracy of the framelines varies depending on the focal length. The 28 is very good, the 50 less so. The 75 is really weak - but there is help:

 

they are usually pretty good in the lower left corner, meaning the bottom of the (horiz) image and the left side crop are on - the upper and right side vary. Try this with your favorite lens and see if that helps. I use this with pretty good results with the 50. The 75... well, its a technique and helps, but not totally there. Changing the frame lines in the m8.2 or M9 would help, but isn't quite cheap.

 

Geoff

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buy a DSLR and we can all go home or place the images in the photo forum it is bound to get :) a brilliant great framing comment ........... see that was easy

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Or just learn to live with it by trying to get a little more in the frame than you need.. ie take one or two steps backwards. Then do final adjustments to your framing in post by cropping ever so slightly. Much cheaper and always 100% accurate. Naturally you'll lose a couple of pixels but nothing significant..

 

//Juha

 

I can't do it this way, so I just learn to use it as is... meaning I chimp a lot to get what I want. I hate cropping outside the camera.

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