Luminous Landscape Forum

Equipment & Techniques => Cameras, Lenses and Shooting gear => Topic started by: KevinA on April 01, 2009, 04:54:33 am

Title: Sub Full frame yuck
Post by: KevinA on April 01, 2009, 04:54:33 am
I took a photography student on a heli trip today, it was a favour for a friend. She brought along a sub FF camera and was busy snapping through the plexi, I had the door open. On the way back we made a slight detour to fly over her house, I got her tp pass me her camera so I could shoot a few for her. How the hell do you take pictures with a viewfinder small like that, I felt like a gynecologist looking for a lost wedding ring.

Kevin.
Title: Sub Full frame yuck
Post by: Josh-H on April 01, 2009, 04:57:13 am
Quote
I felt like a gynecologist looking for a lost wedding ring.
 

Title: Sub Full frame yuck
Post by: AndrewKulin on April 01, 2009, 06:57:01 am
You can fly a helicopter AND take pictures at the same time?!?  Is that safe?
Title: Sub Full frame yuck
Post by: pegelli on April 01, 2009, 06:57:23 am
Quote from: KevinA
How the hell do you take pictures with a viewfinder small like that

By concentrating on taking pictures instead of gear attributes  
Title: Sub Full frame yuck
Post by: KevinA on April 01, 2009, 09:12:09 am
Quote from: AndrewKulin
You can fly a helicopter AND take pictures at the same time?!?  Is that safe?
Um no, the pilot does driving I take the pictures.

Kevin.
Title: Sub Full frame yuck
Post by: stevebri on April 01, 2009, 10:15:48 am
"I felt like a gynecologist looking for a lost wedding ring."

Just made my day boy....  It must be all that fresh air up there in Sunny Norfolk... what a phrase...!

S
Title: Sub Full frame yuck
Post by: 250swb on April 02, 2009, 08:04:35 am
It is a novel way to let people know you have a FF camera. Perhaps more people in Norfolk need to know. Does the pilot do sky writing?  

Steve
Title: Sub Full frame yuck
Post by: TimG on April 02, 2009, 09:19:52 am
Ya, I ask myself that same questions every time I pull out my 8x10 to shoot landscapes.  Why do those people spent $8k to look through such a tiny viewfinder.
Title: Sub Full frame yuck
Post by: Er1kksen on April 04, 2009, 08:14:43 am
For format snobbery, my friend, you've certainly come to the right place. All of us are highly self-assured full-frame or larger shooters, you'll find not a single one of us shoots with a crop-frame DSLR. And you'd certainly expect such, since this is a place for people who produce excellent photographic work, and all of us have many spectacular FF images in the gallery, and we all know no one with a crop-format DSLR can produce anything worthwhile. You're among friends here.

 

But all kidding aside, what sub FF camera were you using? That's quite a broad grouping of different viewfinder sizes to be pigeonholing into one category... I find that, though I love the gigantic FF viewfinder of my OM film cameras (larger and brighter than any FF DSLR, as well), I find the tiny viewfinder on my old E-330 (2x crop) to be quite usable and the much larger (but still not FF) viewfinder of my Pentax K20D (second largest in the class, after D300) to be just the right size for most things. Easily large enough to manually focus and pick out minor details of the landscape, but small enough that you don't have to scan too much with your eyes, which can be important in some situations.
Title: Sub Full frame yuck
Post by: 250swb on April 04, 2009, 05:38:07 pm
Quote from: Er1kksen
Easily large enough to manually focus and pick out minor details of the landscape, but small enough that you don't have to scan too much with your eyes, which can be important in some situations.

Thats a good point, and why Leica introduced different magnification 'M' rangefinders, so people could buy a camera that suited their eyesight or who didn't want to scan around the edges of the viewfinder to see what was in shot. And in terms of coverage within that magnification I think given that very few cameras in the history of SLR's have had 100% viewfinders it is a testament that you just get on and do the job with what you have. And of course, not all DSLR's have 100% viewfinders, some, like the Canon 5D MkII have a disappointing 98% coverage, while some others, like the Olympus E3 have a 100% coverage.

Steve