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Precise focusing with external viewfinders at fast apertures

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panda81

New member
i'm still pretty much a newbie to rangefinders, or photography at all for that matter, so i'm interested in hearing other people's experiences with this...

i like the look of wide angle shots, and i shoot in low light a lot. naturally the type of lenses i'm interested in acquiring are fast wide angle primes :) but since some wide angle lenses require external viewfinders for you to be able to see the entire frame (roughly, at least), then that raises a little concern for me.

sometimes it's already hard enough for me to focus accurately at f/1.4 or f/2 with a 50mm or 35mm lens because of the focusing/recomposing process. but, wouldn't that be an even much bigger issue if say, you're shooting with the 24mm Lux at f/1.4 using an external viewfinder then? do people learn tricks to deal with it, or not use an external finder at all? how do you deal with this situation?

thanks in advance!
 
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thrice

thrice

Active member
The choice is either totally accurate framing (well, close), or totally accurate focus.

Generally, when shooting my 25/2.8 (different beast altogether) wide open I will focus and approximate the composition. With a 24/25 you can imagine the frame just a little more than what fits in the regular viewfinder disregarding framelines. With a 21/1.4 things get a little more tricky :p
 
kalex

kalex

Member
Usually wide angles give u greater depth of field so accurate focus is not totally necessary. most wide angles if u stop them down to arund f4-f5.6 will have DOF of about 5 feet to infinity
 
DavidE

DavidE

Active member
Jerry, I'm fairly new at shooting with a Leica, so I'm still finding my way around the camera and viewfinder, especially with the wide angle lenses.

I use an external viewfinder when shooting with either my 24mm lux or 18mm Super-Elmar. Because I know I'll be using the external viewfinder to compose the shot with these lenses, I also stick a 1.25 magnifier on the built-in viewfinder to help me focus. I considered using a 1.4x magnifier, but it sticks out more than the 1.25x and gets in the way.
 
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