DIY Optical Viewfinder 35mm

thingiverse

This is an optical viewfinder to be used on a rangefinder camera such as Leicas, FEDs or Zorkies when using wide angle lenses such as Zeiss Biogon or the russian Jupiter-12 lenses. Unlike the built-in viewfinder of your FED or Leica,which is made for 50mm lenses, this viewfinder should give you the correct angle of view for 35 mm wide-angle lenses. It may also be useful on a digital camera when you can't or dont want to use the screen. The viewfinder will fit onto the standard hot- or coldshoe of most cameras. You will need: - top and bottom of the viewfinder housing printed at a high resolution - a single use camera like this one: https://www.dm.de/paradies-einwegkamera-iso-400-27-bilder-p4010355787873.html - glue How it's done: 1.Once the two parts of the housing are printed, cannibalize the single use camera to get the two lenses of the viewfinder. (You may cover the lens and shoot/advance the film to also get a nice 400ASA film. another useful thing on these cameras are the flash electronics - but be very careful with the condensator!!!) 2.Once the lenses are extracted, they can be fitted into the housing. The curved sides of the lenses should face each other. Some filing/sanding may be required to fit them into the housing. 3.Clean everything and glue the two parts of the viewfinder. Design notes: i gutted the single use camera to get the lenses and carefully measured them and their distance. The viewfinder body was designed in Autodesc 123 with excessive use of polylines. PS: sorry for the bad photos. they where made with a cellphone camera