Camera/Lens/Accessories Deal-Breakers.

It’s an odd experience. Happened during the height of the pandemic. Working from home, using 3 screens and 2 phones and having a ring light blasting you in the face all day…one day my eye said, “nope, I’ve had enough”, and wasn’t able to focus any longer and I became dizzy and faint. Had to sit in a dark room for about 20-30 minutes and kind of just look at infinity, but try to to focus on it. Eventually a CAT scan cleared me from a TIA or stroke, so that was good. Pretty much the consensus was an ocular migraine.

Moral of that story is I now use “night mode” on my phones and screens so it’s a warmer color. I also have gaming glasses that help do the same. I just need to remember to shut that mode off when I edit my photos, which is about a 50/50 that I do.

My new monitor has the low blue light mode (night mode), it's more comfortable. I usually forget to change it and edit anyway...
 
On the subject of viewfinders... one other thread I discussed this. I make a very conscious decision to stay away from Leica stores.

The one VF that works most easily with my eyes is one in the rangefinder position. OVF, EVF, doesn't matter. I also find rangefinder patch manual focus to be easier than SLR focus. If the current VFs from Leica are at least as good as the Bessa R2, I'd be looking at an expensive move. (Fuji's VFs on the rangefinder-styles are all over the map IMHO.)

If I ever walked into a Leica store.
 
It’s an odd experience. Happened during the height of the pandemic. Working from home, using 3 screens and 2 phones and having a ring light blasting you in the face all day…one day my eye said, “nope, I’ve had enough”, and wasn’t able to focus any longer and I became dizzy and faint.
My eye burn experience increased during the l0ckd0wns (sorry, I had to because, you know...), I strained my eyes significantly to the point that when I looked at EVFs, I had a headache. When we were allowed to visit stores again, I found the same experience with ones from many others, eye pain and irritation. After eye exercises, night vision improved and screens just hurt my eyes even more. With EVFs, I just set them to the lowest brightness possible, even though they and other modern screens lose significant integrity every 18 months, and tune the colours closer to yellow/amber.

If I ever walked into a Leica store.
Uh oh!
 
Closest store is in Las Vegas, it's a pretty decent drive, and I doubt I'll be going anywhere near there anytime in the foreseeable future.

Unfortunately, I've learned "never say never" is a maxim.
True.

That's one store I haven't visited yet but I was told years ago that the staff members were kinder and didn''t do camera snobbery. It won't help if the customer is resisting Leicas.
 
Gordon, if it helps, I've owned two Leica outfits, an M2 and an M3.

I have not the slightest desire to own another one.

I could be tempted by a Hasselblad X2D 102 MPx though ...
Highly unlikely that I would be so tempted as to buy one though!
A basic three lens kit would be north of AUD $25,000, and that's starting to get ridiculous for a hobby.
 
Gordon, if it helps, I've owned two Leica outfits, an M2 and an M3.

I have not the slightest desire to own another one.

I could be tempted by a Hasselblad X2D 102 MPx though ...
Highly unlikely that I would be so tempted as to buy one though!
A basic three lens kit would be north of AUD $25,000, and that's starting to get ridiculous for a hobby.

The Leica tax is one reason I don't want to go there.

I think if I did DMF, it would be Fuji. Prices are low enough, used would be attainable.

Not sure what direction the photo gear rabbit hole is going at this point.
 
The Leica tax is one reason I don't want to go there.

I think if I did DMF, it would be Fuji. Prices are low enough, used would be attainable.

Not sure what direction the photo gear rabbit hole is going at this point.
Yeah, Gordon, a Fuji GFX 100 kit would be considerably cheaper than a similar Hasselblad X2D, by the look of it. Maybe AUD $5,000 to 6,000 less.

However, since I'm not seriously considering either, I haven't looked past the most basic specifications.
 
I call them 'carpet snakes'.

A multi-coloured, zigzag pattern in (usually) either left or right visual field. Sometimes both, but this is relatively rare for me. I often do not have a headache with them, but sometimes do. Also often do have a bit of balance disturbance with them.

Nothing like the ferocious 'classic' migraines I got as a young adult in my early twenties.
I get those occasionally too. A gorgeous multicoloured C shape with zigzag markings. If it didn't get in the way of seeing anything else, it would be quite lovely. I rarely get much beyond a mild headache with them.
 
I've owned a great many different cameras over the years, and I'm not sure I have a real deal breaker. I think actually the thing that has disappointed me most is inaccurate colour. Sounds silly, but so many cameras seem to struggle to reproduce the colours I see in nature truthfully. And although Fuji make cameras that are really nice to use, I have found them amongst the worst offenders. Panasonic used to be very bad too but have improved enormously. Pentax are actually the best I've used, and Sony is pretty good. Of course, YMMV and I expect it does!
I like a good viewfinder too. Optical or Electronic, doesn't really matter.
Apart from that, my main criteria these days are cost and portability. Back in the good old days of employment, money was no object. Now as a retiree, I have to sell something before I can buy anything new. And a great deal of my walking is done with a dog on a lead, so a small camera that can ideally be used one handed is a must. That's why I have used my phone so much recently (the ol' double press of the power button trick coming in handy), and why I shipped out my M43 kit in favour of the little RX100VA.
 
The manufacturer's choice of focusing screens is one factor.

When I had mine changed to K3, it brightened up a lot.
Interesting…I had no idea! Who did the swap for you? Where did you find a different focusing sceen from, and what kind of options are there? I love this camera enough that it’s never leaving my collection, so I’d absolutely pay to make it an even better experience!
 
Interesting…I had no idea! Who did the swap for you? Where did you find a different focusing sceen from, and what kind of options are there? I love this camera enough that it’s never leaving my collection, so I’d absolutely pay to make it an even better experience!
I think any authorized Nikon repair shop will accept such a job. Of course, it is also something that you can do yourself. I had my Df serviced by a Finnish Nikon repair authority. They did a little CLA and also removed the lock mechanism from the ISO dial, per my instructions.

This Taiwanese shop stocks all sorts of focusing screens. The trouble is that you can't take a screen from an old F3 and stick it to your Df, it's going to be too large. I think they source those screens somewhere and then they cut them to order. They're not necessarily a 100% perfect fit but what I got is close enough.




(At this time they stock 4 different fitting screen options. What I have is the K3 screen, known from F3MA. Very bright and cool screen compared to Df's default BriteMatte. Sadly it isn't currenly in stock. )

The site has this informative summary of various focusing screens to help your decision or whet your appetite.

 
I think any authorized Nikon repair shop will accept such a job. Of course, it is also something that you can do yourself. I had my Df serviced by a Finnish Nikon repair authority. They did a little CLA and also removed the lock mechanism from the ISO dial, per my instructions.

This Taiwanese shop stocks all sorts of focusing screens. The trouble is that you can't take a screen from an old F3 and stick it to your Df, it's going to be too large. I think they source those screens somewhere and then they cut them to order. They're not necessarily a 100% perfect fit but what I got is close enough.




(At this time they stock 4 different fitting screen options. What I have is the K3 screen, known from F3MA. Very bright and cool screen compared to Df's default BriteMatte. Sadly it isn't currenly in stock. )

The site has this informative summary of various focusing screens to help your decision or whet your appetite.

Interesting. Out of the 4 available, I’m not sure which one would be the brightest. I also certainly want to be mindful of the cameras AF system…l definitely don’t want to make that worse. I’ll save the site and continue to do some research.
 
Interesting. Out of the 4 available, I’m not sure which one would be the brightest. I also certainly want to be mindful of the cameras AF system…l definitely don’t want to make that worse. I’ll save the site and continue to do some research.
Wow. They even give instructions for the camera, and it looks pretty straight forward. They also note that it will not affect AF performance. I just need to figure out which style screen I’d like, and would be brighter than the original. A, B, or L would ALL make manual focus so much easier on that camera. And as I just bought a boatload of manual focus lenses, I think I’ll give this a whirl at some point.
 
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I think actually the thing that has disappointed me most is inaccurate colour.
This is my number one gripe about the phones I've used. Not that I can't mitigate it with pro modes and OpenCamera or fix it in post but it's nice if the SOOCs are reliably close.

The couple Fujis I've had actually did ok. Had a Canon body for a while where the AWB was just clueless. About as clueless as my current phone, actually, but with different kinds of errors.

A gorgeous multicoloured C shape with zigzag markings. If it didn't get in the way of seeing anything else, it would be quite lovely.
The scintillations I get tend towards C shaped as well but are more pointillistic than zigzag. They move around some but tend to track across the fovea, which can make it pretty hard to do things for half an hour or so sometimes. Hurry up and wait.

I also sometimes get circular patches of dark spots which stream into the centre of the patch. They're not nearly as disruptive, though.

Apologies for asking, but isn't smartphone shooting, which doesn't have the viewfinder optics, rather similar to LVF shooting, which is why many in this thread prefer to have an eye-level TTL viewfinder as it is a completely different experience neurologically?
I think there's probably a lot of things going on here and I also think it would be good to hear from those with strong preferences for viewfinders why they feel that way. It's not something which seems to get discussed that much and this seems like a good opportunity.

Some observations as a starting point,
  • Photography forum participants tend to be older and often have followed the SLR-DSLR-mirrorless technology arc. While a common theme in camera form factor discussions is desire for (D)SLR style ergonomics, nobody I know outside of the enthusiast community shares the preference.
  • With long glass there's a subject acquisition and tracking advantage to being able to sight over the lens and then drop to a centered EVF/OVF that's been hard to replicate with ILC LCDs. My experience with the popup finder phones show to mitigate this is pretty decent for static subjects.
  • Phones have a larger display surface than rear LCDs, providing a less cluttered view (something I see as in the same direction as @gordo's observation on match needles) that's a bit easier to work with as a touch surface.
Personally, across SLR, 6x7, 4x5, DSLR, compacts, mirrorless, and phones I've used 15 different cameras extensively along with occasionally other SLRs, 645, 6x6, and a rangefinder. So my photography's never emphasized the sort of intensive training and muscle memory which seems to bind photographers to (D)SLR style layouts.

I'm primarily a nature and outdoor photographer and, for ultrawide through short tele, don't find the immersiveness of EVF/OVF to be an advantage. With LCDs it's easier to view your composition in context, plus LCDs give a better view without worrying about lens scratches or marks if you wear glasses.

I just need to remember to shut that mode off when I edit my photos, which is about a 50/50 that I do.
I'm pretty good at forgetting entirely, both night mode and changing to glasses without the blue coat.

Of course, it is also something that you can do yourself.
I've changed focusing screens on a couple (pre-AF) Nikon SLRs. Easy and worthwhile.
 
Wow. They even give instructions for the camera, and it looks pretty straight forward. They also note that it will not affect AF performance. I just need to figure out which style screen I’d like, and would be brighter than the original. A, B, or L would ALL make manual focus so much easier on that camera. And as I just bought a boatload of manual focus lenses, I think I’ll give this a whirl at some point.
Well I’m doing just several minutes of research I’ve learned something new about my Df. It has a menu option for using manual focus lenses that affects something in the viewfinder to make life easier. I’ve never tried it, nor knew it was present! I’ll play without first before swapping a screen out.
 
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