Surprisingly hard to find any definitive info. . .

Looking into the world of loupes, for a 5DM2, and many advocate for the Hoodloupe, though some say it's no good for someone with glasses (e.g. me). Once someone told me diopters on viewfinders negate the need for glasses. WRONG! I took my XL1s out once and left my glasses behind and I couldn't see crap no matter how much I adjusted.

so glasses stay on.

That being said, does the newest incarnation of the Hoodloupe play well with glasses? How is the "edge to edge sharpness" thing? (read the older one had only a small circular area in the center of the image in focus, rest was blurry/barrel distorted--is this fixed?)

What about the mag that goes with it? Recommend? Unnecessary?

I believe there is also some kind of plate that makes it easier to mount the thing to a camera. . .is this better than the bungees/rubber bands the loupe is usually shown with in pictures?

I have Cavision handgrips/baseplate/15mm rods rig from years ago that I can mount the cam on for handheld work, and a sachtler DV4 for tripod work, if this matters.

Thanks.

I've had the hoodloupe and sold it again because it was not sharp at all. Poor optics. Now I have the Zacuto Z-Finder and that is a completely different beast: sharp right to the edges and with spacers to adjust the focal plane, so wearing glasses or not is no problem. Highly advisable, even if it's a lot more expensive.

That the new one or the older version? There seem to be too many folks who like it, so it can't be that bad?

I've said this before. I need reading glasses so I just popped out a lens from one of the off the shelf glasses and glued it in to the eypeice of the viewfinder. Be carefull which glue you use. I used supperglue and ended up with a slight misting from the vapour.

Ha! Cute. This would be for magnifying the LCD for liveview

There's some viewfinder opinions in this thread that may be of interest if you haven't already read it:
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/canon-eos-5d-mk-ii-hd/496240-what-would-recommend-minimalist-5dm2-kit.html

Also, there's much info on viewfinders for the 5dm2 here including a review that has the Hoodman in it:
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/canon-eos-5d-mk-ii-hd/481189-dslr-viewfinder-review-comparison.html

As I understand it, the original Z-Finder used an attachment scheme around the camera LCD but the current one uses a tripod mount plate.

To my memory, most people say the Hoodman straps are a joke and the Hoodman crane adequate.

Since the 5DM2 is a b-camera for me, I'm on a minimalist approach and went with the LCDVF. I'll let you know how it is with glasses as my eyes are in the same boat as yours.

I'm not sure the XL1s is a good test. It worked for me but it's a very cheap VF. After going through all the VFs in the above review, the Z-finder floats to the top of my list in terms of the ones with a diopter.... at the cost of weight, size and expense. One feature of the LCDVF I really like is how the optics are engineered so they won't damage the LCD when exposed to sunlight. YMMV

Thanks. I've read a lot of threads on here which is why I was drawn to the hoodman. . .forgot about the LCDVF.

LCDVF is intriguing. . .especially when some places sell it REALLY cheap. Let me know how glasses thing works out.

LCDVF is intriguing. . .especially when some places sell it REALLY cheap. Let me know how glasses thing works out.There are many cheap LCDVF knock-offs available. I doubt that they have the same high quality optics. The genuine LCDVF is a nice piece of equipment but I found that the lack of dioptre adjustment meant that my now somewhat elderly eyes did not have enough accommodation to see properly through it with or without glasses or contact lenses. YMMV.

I have tried the Zacuto Z-Finder with the tripod screw mounting plate & it is fine as you can see clearly into all the corners of the LCD screen & even my tired old eyes can see well. The Letus Hawk looks to be of the same or even better quality & has a nifty looking quick release. I would really like to try out one of these but haven't found a distributor in the UK.

Note that none of these loupes will improve the rather low definition 640x480 LCD screen of the 5DII they just make the pixels bigger but of course better quality optics will not distort those enlarged pixels in the way that cheap lenses will.

Good point. Have to make sure it's the REAL LCDVF if I check one out. Just to be clear, google shopping produces results between $40 and $125.

LCDVF supposedly has 2x magnification

Perhaps the real question here is whether the screen you're putting any magnifying accessory in front of is actually worth magnifying?

The true question is how resolution accurate, color accurate and exposure accurate the recording devices display is in the first place. If it's accurate than a magnified view of it will be useful. If it's NOT accurate, a better view of it will never be anything more than magnified inaccuracy.

So a magnification device purchase is a way of saying "I'm happy with what screen tells me and so I want to see it better."

Personally, I've been fooled so many times into thinking I was viewing an accurate representation about what I was shooting by inexpensive LCD "viewfinders" of all shapes and sizes - only to discover back in the edit suite that the focus was actually wrong, or the color balance was actually wrong - that I've come to be EXTREMELY skeptical about any camera included picture display.

I use them, but ONLY for gross framing and watching a scene unfold. I've learned NEVER to trust the color or the cropping or the exposure of anything displayed on a camera screen. So the personal decision for me NOT to buy an expensive magnifier for something that I feel isn't actually WORTH a closer look, is easy.

YMMV.

Bill, are your comments about your 5DM2 or just about LCDs in general? I ask because I just ran some tests on my 5Dm2 and I am finding the focus using 10x magnification and the Picture Style are both spot on with what I am seeing in post.

I think the key advantage of the viewfinders is as much the stability it adds to handheld. I can't say as mine hasn't arrived but I that discussed often. That's actually an advantage of the z-finder design as it has a large eyecup and the body is a bit stout.

Good point.

I could be wrong (don't have the cam with me now) but I believe on the 5DM2, you HAVE to be in live view to shoot video (I have no plans to use this thing for stills).

Can you trust the EVF? After I got my XL1s, when I learned to use Zebras, I was able to totally trust it for focus, white balance, etc.

With the 5DM2, the 5x/10x magnification button is wonderful, and the histogram is a great exposure aid. . .I experimented and found generally anything over 70 (I'm assuming that's between the 3rd and 4th vertical bars from the left on the histogram) starts to look "hot" even though there's still information retained, and that for generally correct exposure, the bulk of the image should be in the 50-60 range. Probably closer to 50.

This is subjective, and I mean it as a general guide for run n' gun. If you're doing a movie, music video, whatever, expose how you want (but use a real monitor!).

Color is at least in the neighborhood of accurate on the EVF. . .if I'm outside and it looks blue, that's wrong. If I'm inside and everything is Cheeto orange, also wrong.

Ok, my bad. It appears the knock-offs are the ones that come up in searches for $40. The "real thing" is only to be found as low as around $129.

How 'bout the digi finder pro? Can't find much about this one.

What I think is that the 5dMkii is essentially a STILL camera. Everything about it is purpose built to make still shooting work well.

But when you transform it into a video camera, you get OUTSTANDING pictures, but virtually NONE of the feedback points a traditional video camera will have as a matter of course.

Yes, magnification and histograms are nice BEFORE YOU SHOOT. But the entire point of live video (unless you're doing a rare lock down shot) is that the scene will CHANGE over time. And unfortunately, nothing about a DSLR is designed to allow you to see that change while you're recording.

I've often used an example of a shot I did years ago where I followed a shopper walking into a shop. On the very expensive LCD monitor that fellow shooter had loaned me so we could work fast without stringing stingers and fully setting up video village, the footage looked great. Nice colors on the monitor both outside and inside as the subject opened the door, entered the reception area first, then as the shot pushed in on the shop area where people were working in the back.

Back in the studio, on a color balanced "real" monitor, the same shot looked HORRIBLE. The daylight exterior walkup was fine thru the doorway, the interior tungsten was too warm, but acceptable. But behind the counter, in the shop area, the overhead fluorescents were GOD AWFUL "make people look sick" green.

If I'd been able to SEE that as the director, I could have simply shut off the shop area lights and set up a quick tungsten fill light to compensate. But the FALSE reading on the LCD monitor made me think things were acceptable when they were NOT. I spent HOURS doing painstaking garbage mattes and correcting the lighting to make that necessary shot usable.

So any system where you're restricted to "baking in" settings before you shoot - but can't even see when things go wrong - is NOT a monitoring mode I'm comfortable with.

Overall, LCD technology, as I've experienced it, often fakes you into thinking your recording one thing when the truth is you're recording something entirely different. I don't know if it's because the original design of the LCD color technology valued "pretty" over "accurate" or if it was just too expensive to manufacture LCD screens that DO have color accuracy baked in. But just as nobody with much experience would EVER use a consumer TV set over a properly calibrated monitor to do picture evaluation in professional video, I'm a LONG way from convinced that any LCD screen is worthy of being trusted.

So I'm not interested in paying for something to magnify a thing I don't trust in the first place.

I'll just use other tools and my long trained brain to assess the scenes in front of my DSLR and every time I look at either my camera LCD, my Marshall quick field monitor, or my computer screen on location - I'll try to remain smart enough to be a bit skeptical until I can get a signal on a waveform monitor and KNOW that what I'm seeing on any field screen is the truth.

I'm not saying these tools aren't useful. I'm saying to understand their LIMITATIONS. And people who are willing to accept a cheap LCD screen on the back of an inexpensive DSLR as the final word in color or focus just because it "looks fine" on a cheap LCD monitor (with or without a magnification lens involved) is suspect.

Just how I see things.

YMMV.

Depends. . .monitor's great for some situations, but handheld running around in a crowded area with a 7" LCD mounted on the hot shoe can't be fun.

As for the histogram, the 5D firmware I'm using does indeed allow it to operate in real time while you're watching liveview, so you can watch the values change as the scene changes.

The lack of realtime exposure and focus assists while recording is definite minus on the 5DM2 and I wrote that as a disadvantage when I registered my camera with Canon....hence all the firmware hacking

@Josh: What firmware are you using to get that Histogram? How's the stability?

Maybe not the very latest. . .but 2.04 or 2.07 or something like that. No camera in front of me. Should be able to tell you later today. Stability's just fine.

It's definitely there though. . .just keep hitting the "info" button while in live view.

Yeah. . .without it, you cannot judge exposure, in my opinion. I might also tinker with the EVF setttings and see if I can get the color more accurate.

I'm on 2.0.8. Yes, the Histogram shows during Live View but to Bill's point, as soon as you press record, that and the 5x/10x zoom goes away. The only way I've found to get realtime assist during recording is something like Magic Lantern or an external monitor that does false colors, waveforms, or peaking in the monitor.

From what I've read, the 5DM2 has some HDMI issues such as not using the full screen there as well. SmallDP has done some work to overcome that in some of their monitors.

Ah. Ok, that is true then. I guess I was thinking of situations where you'd adjust between rolls instead of during a roll. Same with focus.

For me a loupe is an absolute necessity when on a handheld rig. Even with reading glasses, I can't see anything three inches from my face. The loupe makes it possible to set focus points, read menus and frame in comfort.

I have a 7" Marshall monitor, which is great when using a tripod, slider, or jib. I won't put it on my handheld rig though. I'd need a stronger back to carry it and a giant loupe to view it!

For me, the rule is that a handheld shall always have a loupe and larger grip setups shall never have a loupe. It's all about the distance to the eye. :)

I have the Hoodman which I don't like and the original Z-Finder which I do. I bought an upgrade kit for the Hoodman and it did absolutely nothing. What a rip off.

I use the Loupe either hand held or on a shoulder support with handles and it works fine both ways.
On a tripod or Glidetrack I just slap my glasses on and use the LCD!

Interesting. I found that the x3 upgrade really improved the HoodLoupe. I still like the Z-Finder better, but not necessarily $300 better...

Well, I went the absolute cheapest route and bought a lcdvf knockoff. We'll see if it it works, and if it's no good, we'll see if at least the IDEA of it was good, were it made better, and I can get the real thing.

On the lower end it looks like it's between LCDVF and the digi finder pro, which both come somewhat recommended.

Interesting. I found that the x3 upgrade really improved the HoodLoupe. I still like the Z-Finder better, but not necessarily $300 better...

Maybe I was ripped off and bought a hooky one from someone… It's not always easy to get the America stuff here. You wouldn't believe how much they charge for postage at Zacuto and then there's customs on top. Not moaning, just pointing out that maybe the Hoodloup upgrade I got wasn't kosher.

That might be the case.

The original HoodLoupe had a VERY small sweet spot. Let your eye drift from center and everything gets blurry quick. With the x3, I find it much more forgiving, though not up to the Z-Finder level. I don't even think about my eye location in the loupe any longer.

A solid mount certainly helps. I use the RedRock mount, which is a pain to switch in and out, but is rock solid and travels well.When I was using rubber bands and no x3, the HL was a joke. You're shooting, trying to keep your eye centered, and trying to force the loupe back square on the screen. It was like trying to push jello back to the center of a bullseye on a ship at sea with your nose while wearing a bad monocle. :)

I use the Hoodman with their Hoodcrane attachment device. I like it because it's adjustable. However, it really doesn't lend itself to hinging up and out of the way very easily. It works but it's kind of a pain to make it work and reset it properly. I find the 3X version of the viewer fine. I wear glasses and leave them on. I'm hoping to get a Cineroid EVF eventually, or maybe the Redrock EVF if it ever really comes out.

EPILOG: I received the LCDVF and tried it immediately. I have normal middle age farsightedness ... no coke bottles ... but I cannot use it without a diopter and had to return it. YMMV

I have a Hoodman for my EX1r and I tried it on the 5dm2. I disagree with the review that bashed it. Perhaps the 3x magnifier for the DSLR is the problem. But the EX1r model nicely and evenly magnified the LCD screen and it has a diopter. Attaching it is a another issue however.

Got my cheapo LCDVF knockoff loupe today and tried it out.


Seems fine. . .I am nearsighted, though not blind without my glasses (driving, especially at night, probably not a good idea).

The 2.whatever (I think it's 2.8)x magnification seems decent, didn't notice any cropping of the screen or distortion.

The frame sticks pretty well, and it has a little part you hold down when you pull the magnetized loupe off, so that the sticky frame doesn't come off as well.

Comes with an extra frame, and bag.

When I say I "tried it", I mean I played with it for 5 minutes. I don't have the cam with me right not but feel free to ask any questions.