DIY Kontur viewfinder
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Mark II PoC front view |
For people enjoying cameras and picture taking, eyeglasses represent a very annoying obstacle along with age that vastly contributes to your ability to look into vintage cameras viewers :-)
The day I bought my Voigtländer Perkeo, it came with a little viewer carrying a big view lens in the back. I was quite excited and immediately looked thru it and discovered that nothing (beside some frames) was visible. I Immediately thought "yet another piece of junk that probably miss some relevant parts". I immediately googled and stumbled into the magical world of stereoscopic view.
This is the principle upon which this great viewfinder is built. One eye looks at the scene and the other at the frame magnified by a lens inside the viewfinder. Your brain will do the rest for you, superimposing the two images into one and giving you a natural size of the image you want to frame. Simply GREAT, provided your brain can do the job as it appears that some people have troubles in adapting the two separate views.
I own the 6x6 and recently I decided to get the 24x36 and 6x9. The 24x36 is still easy to find and the cost is acceptable. The 6x9 (despite many claims that the 24x36 can be used for 6x9) is hard to find (as the 6x6) but, worse, quite expensive.
I am a passionate DIY-er and went for a search how to build it. I discovered what are the presumably original patents and launched myself into a new experiment.
The proof of concept is a simple cardboard box with a tape and plastic
built frame for experimenting. Results are promising to the point that I
have ordered some biconvex lenses from China to improve the viewer in terms
of size and accuracy.
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Voigtländer original patent |
Mark2 proof of concept
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Mark II PoC front view |
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Mark II PoC back view |
21 September 2024 Update
The lenses I ordered from China finally arrived: i got different diameters and focal lenghts for experimenting. In terms of diameter / focal length I have the following biconvex lenses (the 30mm is IMHO wrong as it it not biconvex as promised):
19 / 20 : looks promising, although the Kontur seems bigger
23 / 30 : probably the best compromise
30 / 30 : nice lens but quite large
I will proceed to MK3 with the 23 mm
27 September 2024 Update
I can however confirm that the proof-of-concept, so far, is a success.
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MKII on the right |
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MKIV on the left |
I took some pictures with my smartphone to show the inside view.
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MKIII f20 |
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MKII f? |
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MKIV f23 |
I was finally able to get my hands on my 6x6 Kontur viewer. Here how it is built. I wonder why the manufacturer did not build a model with interchangeable frames assuming the focal length of the magnifying glass is the same.
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| Kontur frame (outside) |
Kontur frame (inside)
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