F35: Sony Cw30 Viewfinder Horizontal Invert issue

[japanicjess]

Hey all,

So I'm on a shoot and having a bit of an issue with the CW30 viewfinder and the F35. During handheld operation the image trough the viewfinder is flipping horizontally at random intervals. It seems to only be happening when the eye is pressed up against the eyepiece. We are shooting in a pretty dusty rural area with severe winds so there is probably quite a bit of dirt where it shouldn't be. But I can't workout what's happening to this viewfinder. Has anyone with this setup ever experienced something similar & know a way to fix / work out what's going wrong?

Still got 2 days on the shoot in the middle of nowhere far from any tech support so any info would be much appreciated!

Cheers!

 

[Viddovation]

Hey all,

So I'm on a shoot and having a bit of an issue with the CW30 viewfinder and the F35. During handheld operation the image trough the viewfinder is flipping horizontally at random intervals. It seems to only be happening when the eye is pressed up against the eyepiece. We are shooting in a pretty dusty rural area with severe winds so there is probably quite a bit of dirt where it shouldn't be. But I can't workout what's happening to this viewfinder. Has anyone with this setup ever experienced something similar & know a way to fix / work out what's going wrong?

Still got 2 days on the shoot in the middle of nowhere far from any tech support so any info would be much appreciated!

Cheers!

I think I know what is happening.

The CW30 eyepiece is designed to detach. The release is on the underside of the viewfinder. To detach it, you press the release, then rotate the eyepiece, bayonet style. The LCD screen is designed to be viewable when the eyepiece is detached.

If you look at the detached eyepiece, you'll see it is oriented at a 90 angle of horizontal rotation from the LCD, and there is a mirror inside it at a 45 degree angle to accomplishes this.

So, when you reflect an image on a mirror, is gets inverted. This means that if the LCD image remained constant for both eyepiece viewing and direct viewing, one of the two would appear horizontally inverted.

The way this is corrected is that there is a pin in the bayonet mount that detects if the eyepiece is attached or not, and if so, horizontally inverts the image.

With the eyepiece detached, look under the bayonet mount on the left side of the LCD. You should see a pin that acts as a button. If you press it while running the camera, you should see the image invert.


So, as for your issue - something mechanically is out of spec, and when pressure is applied to the eyepiece, that button is no longer getting pressed, and the inversion applied to compensate for the mirror is getting turned off, which makes the image appear inverted.

Perhaps some tape over the pin would fix the issue for you in the short term, forcing it to keep the inversion applied.

 

[japanicjess]

Hi James thanks so much for getting back. I managed to find the pin you were talking about. If it ever happens again now I've got a temporary fix rather than just ditching the VF and hooking up a second monitor. Life saver!!!

Cheers!