Need for a vastly better quality EVF eyepiece magnifying lens

danap

Active member
I løøøøøve my AF100, but not without a good portion of désamour:

The reason is: it is beyond my limited understanding how and why Panasonic has equipped the AG-AF 100 camera with such a immensely bad-quality magnifying lens and put this kind of thing in front of a decent EVF LCD:

1. The magnifying lens does NOT magnify the EVF lcd picture enough. The tiny image is viewed in a tunnel from Dover to Calais...at the end of a long and thin tunnel. This retarded EVF is a sad backward leap in term of ergonomy. Watching the picture in the AF100 EVF feels almost a bad joke.... compared with the GH1 and GH2 to mention only two of many possible examples.

2. The cheap glass used in the EVF distorts (pincushion) the picture beyond acceptability. Panasonic why loose your reputation pushing second rate quality on your users?


Comparing with many other cameras, what we have got here is basically .... crap by current pro and prosumer standards IMHO.

Having designed my own DIY eyepiece for my Canon 5D mark II before Zacuto launched their ZFinder, I managed to obtain a much better magnification and lack of distortion with little effort and an old zoom preyed for a magnifying lens. So DIY could be a viable option, since there is no software upgrade for such misdesign ...

So, ladies and gentlemen, anys ideas about a DIY replacement for Panasonic's crappy EVF lens ?

PS. They could have saved the money for the whole EVF and the volume occupied by this strangely protruding object and replaced it, e.g., by an additional HDMI port and full OSI output including waveform, vectorscope and peaking.

DEAR PANASONIC, SAVE US FROM YOUR CRAPPY EVFs !
 
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OMG.. I totally agree.

In addition, I am farsighted and I'm at the far end of the diopter adjustment (+2.0). When the Diopter is at the far end I see ghost like reflections of the Display info in that cheap magnifying lens.
Please let me know if you figure out a replacement lens for the EVF. It is sorely needed.
 
OMG.. I totally agree.

In addition, I am farsighted and I'm at the far end of the diopter adjustment (+2.0). When the Diopter is at the far end I see ghost like reflections of the Display info in that cheap magnifying lens.
Please let me know if you figure out a replacement lens for the EVF. It is sorely needed.


+1

silvio bonomi
 
I'm right there with you. The thing is, these are the kind of EVF's that are the standard in the video world. It took Zacuto to think outside the box with the Z-Finder for us to have a better option. This ultra magnified option will more than likely be a standard in years to come it just hasn't happened yet. I would love a DIY option and would jump onboard if someone comes up with a good way. For DSLR's the sweet spot seems to be 2.75x zoom with the Letus hawk. I'm not sure what that would equate to, and get a similar sized image from the AF100 EVF tho since its a smaller image screen to start with. I hope someone comes up with an easy DIY solution.
 
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