Holding a loupe

[Alan Clark]

I was up on the moors today with a large format camera. It was quite windy. With my head under the dark cloth I needed one hand to control the cloth, a second hand to focus the camera, and a third hand to hold the loupe. Unfortunately I've only got two hands, so things got a little tricky. On the way home I started thinking of a way to mechanically hold the loupe in place, hands free, that would allow it to be moved around the ground glass as needed.
Any ideas anyone?

 

[Joanna Carter]

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[Alan Clark]

Thanks Joanna. The Paramo is a similar design to my own home-made dark cloth. The problem I had was a side wind. This kept blowing the cloth across in front of my eyes, so I needed a hand to keep it out of the way. If I had been using a Paramo I think I would have had the same problem.

 

[Ian-Barber]

I own the Paramo dark cloth and to be honest, I do not like it that much

 

[Reginald S.]

Alan, since years I successfully work with a 3,5 dioptrin reading glass - no loupe and so no further hands necessary.

The dioptrin needed depend on your own eye.
Without any fear I brought my camera to the optician and we made some tests.
If you can imagine, a real optician may be highly interested in ancient optics

With 5 dioptrin I had to stick my nose to the groundglass, 3,5 gave me the best view with optimized distance nose to the GG.
I may change to 4 dioptrin today..

 

[Alan Clark]

Alan, since years I successfully work with a 3,5 dioptrin reading glass - no loupe and so no further hands necessary.

The dioptrin needed depend on your own eye.
Without any fear I brought my camera to the optician and we made some tests.
If you can imagine, a real optician may be highly interested in ancient optics

With 5 dioptrin I had to stick my nose to the groundglass, 3,5 gave me the best view with optimized distance nose to the GG.
I may change to 4 dioptrin today..

Reginald, thank you. Your idea sounds excellent. In fact, I actually have a headband to which you can fix high res. magnifying lenses to. I use it when I need to make precise measurements when making guitars. Until I just read your post I never thought of using it to focus my camera. Thanks again. I will try it out tomorrow.

Alan

 

[Reginald S.]

If things doesn't work well:
We have LIDL selling cheap glasses with different dioptrin, probably around five Euro thisadays.

Best,
Reginald

 

[Alan Clark]

Thanks Reginald. Good old LIDL. They may be cheaper than Boots.

 

[Ian-Barber]

Thanks Reginald. Good old LIDL. They may be cheaper than Boots.

I struggle with my Pentax Spotmatic as there is no adjuster on the eyepiece so I bought some cheap reading glasses from Pound Shop cut the lens to the same shape as the eyepiece and it works great

 

[Alan Clark]

Ian I did a similar thing with my two OM1 cameras. When I was at Specsavers for an annual eye test I took an OM1 and got them to check what I needed. They sold me a single lens, which I cut up to fit the eyepiece of both cameras. There was some left over, and when a friend gave me his old Pentax MX I fitted a piece into this as well.
I did check first with Specsavers that the lens supplied would be plastic, not glass.