One of my pet peeves with some compact cameras is that they often skip the viewfinder entirely. But one photographer and YouTuber decided to not only fix the missing viewfinder on his camera, but add retro style in the process. James Warner recently shared how he built a waist-level hot shoe viewfinder with about $10 worth of materials (about £8 / AU$16).
Add-on waist-level viewfinders exist, but they cost around $50 / £40 / AU$80 and are only designed to work with specific focal lengths. Warner, who runs the YouTube channel Snappiness, decided to try to build his own, both to add a viewfinder to his Ricoh GR series compact camera and to learn how optical viewfinders work for a larger project building his own camera.
ABOVE: Watch the building process of this $10 finder!
Warner starts with his inspiration: a diagram of how optical viewfinders on DSLRs actually work. The process involves using lenses and mirrors to bounce the view up into the viewfinder, though since Warner wanted to make a waist-level viewfinder, his design isn’t quite so complex.
Warner learned through a process of trial and error, trying different concave and Fresnel lenses plus a tiny square mirror he found at a craft store. Once he found the combination that worked best, he used a 3D printer to create a housing for the lenses and mirrors, though he created a rough template first with cardboard and says DIYers can get creative with materials if they don’t have a 3D printer.
The resulting product is a fully optical viewfinder that sits in the hot shoe slot and offers a waist-level view. Of course, as a fully optical design without any connection to the camera, the gadget shows a rough estimation of what the lens sees and doesn’t include data like whether or not the image is in focus. But it’s a cool project both to add a bit of retro fun and learn about how optical viewfinders work.
Warner shares the full list of materials and 3D printing files from his YouTube page.
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