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WLF Frustration!

v-system

New Member
Sorry I don't have the images developed yet for posting but I had a frustrating experience tonight taking photographs at and near the Tanana/Chena River confluence in Fairbanks, Alaska. I was able to compose and take some good, best-practice shots of the river (pro shade, pre-release, cable release) and that went just fine. Fortunately (or unfortunately, as it may have turned out) I had the opportunity to photograph a pair of beavers swimming in one of the heavily wooded back-waters. Trying to level my shots at all and follow the subjects on their course through the water was virtually impossible with the waist-level-finder. I missed maybe 4 nice tail-slap shots just trying to find the horizon. I felt like I was playing flight simulator without instruments and a backward joystick! On the way home I also took an image of an amazingly huge Russian aircraft parked on the tarmac at Fairbanks International Airport and, due to constraints on my approach to the subject (read fences), The only way I could record the totality of it (without dwarfing it with the 50mm) was to use the 250 diagonally. Seting up a diagonal subject with the reversed WLF is a nightmare! I had wanted to wait and get a metered prism like the PME51 but I just can't wait. I think I'll be finding an NC-2 or equivilent soon before I lose more opportunities to this awkward finder.
 
It takes time and practice to get used to holding and pointing a camera with reversed L/R image.
Some users will never be comfortable without a prism though.

If necessary I shoot without a finder both with 500 series cameras and the SWC.
Some of my best shots were made that way..........


Vic.
 
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