Hello LF community, this is my first post. I hope someone finds this helpful just as I have found everyone else's info here extremely valuable towards bettering my passion.
Up until this point I have been using a cheapo 8x plastic loupe for focusing on the ground glass. It works ok in bright situations but is very soft around its edges and not very well suited for focusing in dim situations. On a recent outing frustration got the best of me and I thought to myself 'there has to be a better solution out there that does not require what little money most of us have.'
After tooling around the web for ideas on what to use as a gg focusing aid I ended up finding a few things (reading glasses and 80mm enlarging lens being my two fav) that I settled on trying with stuff I have around my house. The reading glasses did a decent job but I found myself getting lost in the focus as to where my head needs to be in relation to the gg for a perfect focus ability at the knob. If you dont have that issue then the reading glasses are probably a good solution for you. The enlarging lens used in reverse to its proper mounting orientation against the gg works fine as well but I found that my viewing area was tiny and dim. Unsatisfied I started digging around my extra equipment (aka crap I horde) to see what I could build and this is what I came up with.
Materials:
-old lens hood
-a couple of crappy filter rings with the filter glass removed/broken out of them
-electrical tape
-the front element (and its housing) of an old or broken lens
-window/door weather seal with one side an adhesive surface (home depot 2$)
-rubber wire housing from some old copper wire laying around or electrical tape can work for this as well
-super glue
I started by disassembling a broken 55-200mm Nikon digital zoom lens. I took the whole front element housing and put away the rest. (NOTE: its important you choose a lens element that equals at or around the (X) magnification you prefer. This 55-200mm front element puts me around 4-5x magnification. The only way I was able to determine this was by comparing it with other crappy loupes of varying magnification I have laying around.
I then wrapped the jagged rear of the element housing with the window/door seal foam leaving just enough of a seal lip sticking out from the element housing so as to provide my focusing eye comfort and safety from the jagged plastic.
Once the seal was applied I then ran a few complete laps around the foam seal with electrical tape to help secure it to the element housing and offer protection for its easily ripped foam surface.
Set the front element assembly aside for now and find your crappy filter rings (for me 52mm rings were needed for the Nikon 55-200mm filter mount). safely remove or just 'break' the glass/plastic element out of the ring. Start with just 1 until you know you will need more after testing the final product.
********can only attach 4 pics per post. continued in pt2 below*********
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