Director’s Viewfinder

[John Sharaf]

Not really possible unless the imagers of the SLR camera and the format you’re shooting is exactly the same. A better, cheaper and more accurate tool would be a tape measure and the DOF charts in the ASC Manual.

JS

[Robert Flet]

Maybe a Laser tape measurer. 🙂 Sincerely, thank you for responding.

[Mark Suszko]

This sounds like the beginning of a great idea for an iphone app.

iPhone still pic with various frames superimposed for the different formats and then a slide control to see how they change when you change the lens.

Let me know when I can start seeing a royalty payment for thinking of it first.

[Todd Terry]

Well, it doesn’t use a still pic…

…but…

The new followfocus unit from RedrockMicro bascially does pretty much that… either with an iPhone or iPod that fits into the unit and displays things like field of view for various focal lengths, DoF amounts for f-stop changes, and all kinds of stuff.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Robert Flet]

Mark Suszko, Todd Terry

Sorry Mark but you are too late with your idea. Artemis Director’s Viewfinder can be found on iTunes and is for the iPhone.

[Robert Flet]

Mark Suszko, Todd Terry

Sorry Mark but you are too late with your idea. Artemis Director’s Viewfinder can be found on iTunes and is for the iPhone.

Todd, I found the website. The piece of equipment looks interesting but I do not see how it could be used as a director’s viewfinder. I am currently looking around their site for a PDF on the hardware.

Thanks to both of you for your posting.

[Todd Terry]

Oh Robert, it can’t be used as a director’s finder. I was just taking the rare opportunity to bust Mark’s chops over his “new” iPhone idea… which someone had already somewhat invented for him.

In a perfect world, what you want is a real groundglass director’s finder like the bigshots use. Unlike the simple “see through” directors finders, they work almost just like a DoF converter… with a lens mount in front (PL mount, or whatever), a groundglass in the middle, and an eyepiece at the rear.

For years, the Fries/Mitchell Finder was the “industry standard”…

https://www.thedopshop.com/product_info.php?cPath=24&products_id=49

But there are other ones as well…

https://www.zgc.com/webstore.nsf/products/arri_303103
https://www.filmcamerakit.com/html/viewfinders.htm

Unfortuantely, these are also pretty darn expensive.

The ones from Cavision are more affordable…

https://www.cavision.com/viewfinders/cine.htm

…but I’m not sure the Cavision version gives a correctly-oriented image, it might be inverted. I’m not sure about that.

T2

__________________________________
Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Robert Flet]

Thanks for the links. There is no viewfinder in my future, the price is too steep for the good ones. The chart should be good enough, but I wish the SLR’s had that feature.

[Steven Bradford]

The Cavision one is a total joke, and a waste of money. It doesn’t come with a groundglass, you’re supposed to somehow find one on your own then cut it and mount it. Like most of their products, which look good at first glance, than you discover some key component is made of cheap plastic, etc.

Steven Bradford
https://www.3dstereomedia.com 3D company I’ve worked with since 1990
https://www.seanet.com/~bradford/ my personal home page, find my greenscreen page there.
https://www.seattlefilminstitute.com the school I teach at.