eyepiece magnifier

hi
does anyone know if it is possible to get an attachment which you can add to the viewfinder so that it magnifies the image in the viewfinder as i am having problems trying to focus when looking through the viewfindwer
i was told you could get them but every shop i have been to say they dont do them
regards

i have a pentax k200, i have set the dioptre for my eye,

I have three of them - excellent

Buying from SRS works out slightly cheaper

There is a better one than the Pentax version, made by KPS on ebay, made in Korea but there are ones on sale from UK sellers. It is better made than the Pentax one, with better, sharper optics and it clamps onto the Pentax eyepece with screws, whereas the Pentax one simply pushes on and can fall off. I have tried both. The KPS one also has slightly higher magnification.

The Nikon eyepiece mag for the Nikon D90 (Nikon DK-21M) also fits on Pentax DSLR's and is cheaper than the Pentax one...and just as good,

I have both the Nikon and Pentax versions (Pentax were late to the market). IMHO, the Pentax is better made and fits slightly better, also allowing access to dioptre adjustment more easily. The Nikon is about 2/3 the price.

I have one of the pentax ones and it very rarely comes off(only to go on one of the other cameras). Also fits the MZ5-n.

Mine has never fallen off, comes off easy when you want it to but is firmly attached. As smc says, the dioptre adjustment is easy to operate with it on.

The Pentax one is very well made, fits easily, never comes off and as said by others makes the dioptre adjustment very easy to operate.

While the OME-53 will help manually focussing, you will lose a little of the information you can see while lookibng through the viewfinder. You will have to move your eye a little to see the shutter speed etc.

The thing that helped me far more with manual focussing was a split prism focus screen.

The KPS actually looks downward and doesn't cut off much information.

Sadly looking for the sharpest image on the screen is the only way to get the image properly in focus. It's the way it's done on large format cameras. Split image finders are only approximate Try focusing on say the side of a door with the camera level on a tripod.... now move the camera up and down the door and see if the split image still shows that it is in focus.... if it does it's not very accurate

My katzeye split image screen makes a hell of a difference to me when focusing, much more than the OME-53 ever did (as far as I could tell all it did was cut off the viewfinder information and when I broke it I didn't ever bother to replace it).

Algi is right about looking for the sharpest image as on LF cameras BUT my LF camera has a 5x4" focussing screen AND I use a loupe. On the pathetic little screen of the K20D the katzeye makes life a 1000x times easier and a far larger percentage of my photos are now in focus. My only regret is that I didn't get one sooner.

Kris.

The reason that more of your photos are now in focus Kris is that they are within the DOF which is fair enough. Anything requiring exact focus would need a 2x Refconverter and focus on the screen. Just do the focus test on a door to see what I mean.

A good tip for focusing on the screen is to focus on some lettering, if you can't read it.... it isn't in focus

I know all about focusing on the screen as I do it with all the tilts and swings available on the view camera but the screen on the K20D is just too small to do that all the time. If the thing I want in focus isn't in the centre of the picture I focus on it with the split screen, reframe, then tweak the focus again. The DOF on my K 50mm f/1.2 isn't exactly huge but at least the image is nice and bright.

BTW, not many of my pictures have any text in them! I'm usually in the middle of a field...