Sports finder

[rpcrowe]

I have been using this sports finder for years now. It was originally part of U.S. Navy Topcon Kit that was issued to Naval Aircrews to do maritime surveillance photography using the issued 35mm Topcon DSLR. This finder allowed the aircrewman to shoot with the flight helmet visor in place because you really didn't need to place your eye against the sports finder to roughly frame your image. The framing of this sportsfinder was set up for a 90mm lens which was issued as the primary maritime reconnaissance lens for the Topcon camera.



It has served me well over a series of SLR. DSLR and Mirrorless cameras when using long lenses, especially long primes. I can spot the subject (be it a bird against the sky or a surfer on the ocean) easily and then revert to the eye level viewfinder. The limitation of this finder was that it was only set up for a 90mm lens on a full frame camera.

I have found that a more exact framing might help me in shooting small birds in flight around my yard. Which I have been trying rather unsuccessfully to accomplish! I found this sportsfinder on eBay which looks interesting...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Hama-Plasti...53.m2749.l2649

I figured that twenty bucks won't break me and it might just be fun to use.

[loosecanon]

Back in the 1970s/1980s I used my Canon F1 with its sports finder, which replaced the original pentaprism. It gave a view finder with an image viewable some cm from the exit pupil of the finder. One can also turn the finder from eye level to a sort of waist level. it certainlt worked well wiith long lenses at air shows where each film shot cost money so long bursts were not on. It made finding aircraft in the viewfinder much easier.

[rpcrowe]

Nikon, about the same time, offered an auxiliary viewfinder which worked quite a bot like an articulating LCD, allowing viewing from several inches away from the camera.

However, these sportfinders are a more simple (albeit, a bit less accurate) solution. Why don't I simply use the LCD? That would be a decent compromise except that I have a hard time using the LCD in bright sunlight.

[Manfred M]

Those wire frame finders seemed to be stock items on the Speed Graphic cameras the press photographers used from early in the 20th Century right through well into the mid to late 1960s. I wonder if this was a bit of a "kludge" trying to cater to that group that were transitioning to 35mm SLR cameras.

[rpcrowe]

I frequently used the wire sportsfinder on a 4x5 Graphic Camera. I preferred the Crown Graphic to the Speed Graphic because of its far lighter weight. I very seldom needed the focal plane shutter of the Speed Graphic and always considered it very clunky to use.

However I just received the Hama Plastic Sportsfinder and don't like it a bit. It is far larger than I expected and is not as quick to use as the Topcon finder...

Nice thing about eBay is that an item is quite easy to resell...