Veteran Member Registered: May, 2010 Posts: 5,901 | | Review Date: October 22, 2012 | Recommended | Price: $20.00
| Rating: 8 |
| Pros: | Helps a lot with manual focus and macro work. | | Cons: | Depending upon which adapter is use bottom of screen gets cut off a bit. | |
A lot of the reviews I had seen on this magnifying eyepiece were so-so but I couldn't really afford a more expensive one and when I saw one for $20 shipped in the Amazon Warehouse I decided to give it a go. Given the reviews I really didn't expect to be keeping it but I was actually pleasantly surprised to find that not only did it work, but it worked pretty well. While I am sure there are better ones out there this one IMHO does a respectable job of doing what it's supposed to do once you get the hang of how it works.
I spent an hour or so this afternoon in a not particularly bright room trying out this eyepiece with various manual lenses. It took me a few minutes to figure out how to use it but once I did I found it actually helped my accuracy with MF quite a bit. I first started out with the adapter marked Pentax, actually that wasn't the best option as the Pentax adapter is a little loose on my K-x. One of the Nikon adapters actually gave me a much tighter fit and also allowed me to see the bottom of the screen a bit better. I'm not much of an eyecup user but with this device I will be using one as it does seem to help quite a bit in terms of keeping any stray light from hitting the VF while using the eyepiece.
I'm not terribly bad at MF, but MF can really tend to over stress and strain my eyes which are prone towards it to begin with. Having this adapter on helped quite a bit with that. My eyes felt a lot less tired after my practice session than than they normally do. The eyepiece does flip up and out of the way when not needed so I've decided that I'm going to leave it on the camera all the time.
The one gripe that I have is that while using this I kind of had to look over and down into the bottom of the VF to see the stats there. I could do it but it wasn't easy and it was a bit annoying. I ended up using the back LCD screen a lot more than I normally do for changing out shutter speed and so forth, and I had to listen for the beep rather than look for the little green stop icon, which is something I'm not fond of as I prefer a muted beep to an audible one. I'm sure though in time I'll just take it for granted and just do it. It wasn't a deal breaker and the advantages of using the eyepiece definitely weighed out the small annoyance of the cut off bottom of the VF. It's not that hard really to flip the cup up adjust then flip it down again to focus. Takes some practice but once you get it I'm sure it becomes second nature.
This eyepiece generally runs a bit more than I paid for mine. But even at say $28-35 I do think it's a pretty good buy. It might not be quite as good as more expensive eyepieces, but for the money I don't think I could do better than this.
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