Anyone used a 35mm lens on an IIIG without a separate viewfinder? Is it possible?

[Jodad]

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Hi all,

As the title says, has anyone used a 35mm lens on an IIIG without a separate viewfinder? Is it possible?

I have read in two places vague comments about it being possible using the edges of the cameras VF without needing a dedicated 35mm VF. Both times, there were no responses to those specific comments so...

 

Has anyone tried it?  

[spydrxx]

Of course it is possible, the real issue is whether one is comfortable with it. Some people try to visualize the framing by shifting their eyes about the viewfinder...personally I never found that particularly useful. Others merely mentally fix in their minds the expanded coverage and crapshoot. Having done both of those on numerous bodies over the years, I much more comfortably prefer an accessory viewfinder....either one made by Voigtländer, or a much smaller one I constructed out parts from a non-working 35mm fixed lens consumer camera body. There's a guy on Ebay from Israel who sells these all the time fairly inexpensively. So anyway, since you asked the question, why not try it out and see how it works for you without an accessory viewfinder.

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[TomB_tx]

I've used a 35 on my IIIf for years, with experience you can judge the coverage. (Not the precise edges of the frame, but general effect.)

[luigi bertolotti]

It depends all on what kind of scene you are taking... there are situations in which borders are important (or, also, the horizon positioning), and others in which center of frame is more important than the marginal error on guessing the borders: I never used a IIIG, but with M3, for instance, I preferred to use a pocketable 35 than a goggled one... and avoided to keep with me my SBLOO (which used regularly with IIIc, but it has a smaller window than IIIg)

Edited September 22, 2016 by luigi bertolotti

[Jodad]

Thank you for your replies guys. Luigi, what you say about the situations where borders are particularly important and where they aren't is the crux. I guess what I need to do is try a 35 and see how accurate/close to a 35mm view the iiig's vf can get..