Hello everyone,

I still haven't tried shooting the Sputnik and trying to learn how to use it properly and efficiantly.

The manual says:

The frame viewfinder is formed by the front frame and the lighthood rear panel. To make it ready for use it is necessary to press-in the cover with the name plate until it catches. To close the viewfinder, the lighthood rear panel should be slightly pulled up.

When focusing, the camera should be held at the eye level and the object should be looked at through a square window in the rear panel, keeping the camera at a distance at which the frame edges coincicde with those of the square opening in the front panel. In this case the borders of the field-of-view will be the borders of the shot.

Though it seems I can't get my eye close enough for the rear and front windows edges to connect, I find this very difficult.

How do I do this?

Or is it possible to simply use the lens viewfinder to frame shots by just looking down through it?

The "Frame Finder" (also known as a "sports finder") is a somewhat "quick and dirty way of pointing the camera in approximately the right direction. It's never very accurate. Basically, the small hole for your eye is just to get your eye as central as possible and then the front frame gives a rough idea of what will be included on the film.

However, reframing whan mounting with MF slides doesn't give much scope. So it's important to get the best framing possible at the taking stage. For that the ground glass in the hood is the best option provided with the Sputnik. But even that isn't particularly easy to use - it was based on the type of viewfinder used in the Voigtlander Brilliant cameras and gives a very bright view, but it has drawbacks.

As a result, some enterprising photographers have created alternative viewfinders using the optical viewfinder parts from other cameras. I think Don Lopp - who very kindly (and out of the blue) sent me one - used viewfinders from Polaroid cameras. All that's needed is that the field of view matches and a way of mounting it on the camera.

Bob Aldridge

 

Hello everyone,

I still haven't tried shooting the Sputnik and trying to learn how to use it properly and efficiantly.

The manual says:

The frame viewfinder is formed by the front frame and the lighthood rear panel. To make it ready for use it is necessary to press-in the cover with the name plate until it catches. To close the viewfinder, the lighthood rear panel should be slightly pulled up.

When focusing, the camera should be held at the eye level and the object should be looked at through a square window in the rear panel, keeping the camera at a distance at which the frame edges coincicde with those of the square opening in the front panel. In this case the borders of the field-of-view will be the borders of the shot.

Though it seems I can't get my eye close enough for the rear and front windows edges to connect, I find this very difficult.

How do I do this?

Or is it possible to simply use the lens viewfinder to frame shots by just looking down through it?