>Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 13:01:52 Set the time zone in the Time preference
>utility
>From: "Dirk Wright" <wright@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: [OM] OM-1 meter + light leaks?
>
>I was shooting in bright sunlight yesterday, and I noticed that the
>meter needle would change a lot based on whether I shaded my face or
>not while looking through the viewfinder. I assume this is at least
>from the reflection into the viewfinder from my glasses. Will an eyecup
>fix this problem? It was a real hassle trying to hold my hand over the
>camera and my face and also compose the image, set the aperture and
>shutter, etc. even *with* the camera on a tripod! Anyone else have this
>experience?
Frm my own experience I think the problem is due not so much to light
reflected _back_ into the camera from your glasses as light directly
incident on the back of the camera.
If you read Ian Nichols' description of how focusing screens work,
understanding the problem is simple. The OM1 meter takes its reading from
the image projected onto the focusing screen by the lens. If however you
take the lens off the camera and look in through the front, you'll still be
able to see an image on the focusing screen, this time projected onto it
through the viewfinder. If your face is sufficiently shading the viewfinder
while you're metering a shot, this isn't much of a problem, because not
much light light is entering the camera from the back compared to through
the lens. It would have to be a very bright light to travel through the
camera, be diffused on the focusing screen, thravel up through the finder,
then be reflected off your glasses back through the prism to be focused on
the screen - I don't think it would be comfortable to look at! Even so,
the amount reflected back by your glasses or eyes would be small compared
to the light coming in the right way, and it's the ratio which is
important. When there is a bright light either shining directly into the
finder, or lighting up your face (with your face then lighting up the
viewfinder) you run into the problems you have mentioned. IMHO, the
problems are worse for glasses wearers not because the glasses reflect more
light back in than your eyeball would, but because they force you to hole
your face further away from the finder letting more light creep in around
the edges.
Being a foureyes myself, I got an eyecup and tried it out for a while. It
does stop the metering problem, but I found it too much of a pain because I
could no longer see the entire viewfinder image without moving my head
about. I don't know if a corrective diopter in the eyecup would let me see
the whole finder (?? I guess this is probably in the archives), but I think
it would be too much of a nuisance to take my glasses off every time I
wanted to take a picture, which where I go is often impractical, so I just
ditched the eyecup. Generally just shading the viewfinder or my face with
my hand or hat is enough but if I'm really worried I'll make an ad-hoc
compensation or bracket.
Dylan
PS as Acer said, the eyecup also stops your glasses getting scratched. My
old pair of specs had this funny mark on the L lens, the top and right
sides of a rectangle. It took me a while to work out that it lined up
neatly with my viewfinder! The timing was also coincident with a 3 month
world tour, where the camera got a daily workout from heat of Aussie summer
to the temperate Mexican winter to the snows of eastern Europe and back
through Spain and India. As usual, the OM1 didn't miss a beat!
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