This has been on my drawing board for a while now, and I finally managed to cobble together a prototype: a simple, wire sports finder / viewfinder similar to the ones on Speed and Crown Graphics, but without doing irreversible damage to a vintage camera.
The wire is 1/16 dia. brass tubing from a local hardware store. Bent to form a 5x7 frame. The wire is mounted on a 7" long 1/2" x 1/16th" piece of basswood, with a second piece glued just below the wire to form a shelf for the wire to pivot up and down. The wire is then covered with a strip of leather and glued in place with contact cement. Two small pieces of 1/8" x 1/2" basswood serve as corner keepers to hold the wire viewer in the up position, or swivel to allow the wire viewer to pivot down and out of the way to fold the camera up. Two pieces of adhesive-backed velcro, one on the top rear of the lens board frame and one on the wire viewfinder, hold this accessory in place and allows quick removal.
Not shown: I marked the rear of the wire with a Sharpie at the half-way points on the vertical, 5" sides to align my eye for composing and shooting when the film holder is inserted.
Focusing can be done on the gg (either in handheld mode or on tripod, before inserting the film holder) or using a distance scale affixed to the bed of the camera. Final composing and shooting handheld (or on tripod) can be done using the wire viewer.
I tried this out today while snowshoeing; worked great. Looking forward to working more with this.
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