Originally posted by Ontarian50 As for the "decently priced waist level"; save your money. I stupidly bought one for my F2 many years ago, thinking it would be a cool addition to my F2 accessory kit. It takes only a minute to figure out how useless a waist level is on a 35mm. The image is teeny tiny, at a waist level distance, and using the magnifier is essential all the time. And while a waist level is a fine way to use a 6x6 Hasselblad, on a rectangular format 35mm turning the camera sideways for a vertical shot is almost impossible with the waist level (held up to eye level, and looking at the image upside down, no fun).
Based on my experience with the waist finder on an LX back in the day, I must disagree.
There was no live view on a film camera,
so if you wanted to shoot round a corner or over the heads of a crowd,
the waist finder was the only way to go.
I would use hyperfocal, or guesstimate with the distance scale,
so the magnifier was not needed in those situations.
Of course, just the same as with a Hasselblad or Rolleiflex,
you had to rotate the camera in the "wrong" direction to compose.
The first 35mm SLRs
only had a waist-level finder: