Hello,

Just an FYI - I called a bunch of camera stores and couldn't find any of the parts.

Took me about 5 minutes to find all of them on eBay. Hopefully I'll be able to get it together in a week or so.

Dan GSR wrote:
ever look thru a medium format viewfinder :o

Yeah.. Got to handle a bunch of canon's full frame cams and medium format cams including the H1D at a photo-expo on saturday. The medium format really is something.

Anyhow. I'll probably try this myself. Thanks for the tip!

I know this is an old post, but I just ordered all the parts for this to try it on my 20D.

Can anyone tell me what a dremmel is, and since I don't know what it is I probably don't have one -- so what else could I use? (it might make sense to me once I see all the parts...

Anyone else try this this out?

Amy,
A Dremel tool is a high RPM rotary cutting/filing tool. You use different bits in the tool depending on what your are cutting. While it would take longer to do, I would think you could use a round metal file to do the same job.

http://www.dremel.com/HTML/home_fr.html

Looks like you can get all the parts from Adorama for about $55. Is that a good price? How hard is it to make the modifications to the parts? Got a Dremel last year for Christmas, but haven't had a need for it yet.

$55 is about what B&H charges for the same parts, so that's probably a good price for getting the parts new. Problem is that DK-17M is so scarce right now. Can't find it in stock on my usual .com sites.

I wasn't able to find it in stock anywhere (the DK-17M) which is why I ended up getting it on ebay. There's a seller there in Hong Kong with 4 more of them if anyone is interested.

I just ordered the DK_17m from www.nikonmall.com for $44 They say it is available. but they haven't shipped yet. I got the rest of the parts ordered from BH total at $68 after shippings

finally gave this thing a good workout today
this thing rocks , a millions times more comfortable, it should have come from the factory like this

the hood is a 43928048392x times better than the stock eyepiece
i can comfortably press my eye against the hood, and no ambient light gets in
makes it much eaiser to see

that was one of the weak points of the stock eyepiece
ambient light got in too easily

and ive gotten used to the magnified image, I don't think I could go back

nice, the small viewfinder was the first difference i noticed between digital and 35mm.

Ok... just checked B&H and they now have all 3 items in stock. Here are their prices:

Nikon NIDK2 DK-2 Rubber Eyecup $9.95
Nikon NIEPAN6006 Eyepiece Adapter for Select SLR $3.95
Nikon NIDK17M DK-17M Magnifying Eyepiece $41.95

thanks for the info! looks like i have to dig out my rounded filer.

Hello,

Just received the DK-17M from Hong Kong today - it wasn't in stock when I ordered so I went to ebay.

I have very little skill at such projects but had this together in about 20 minutes.

It is better than the Canon viewfinder. I guess I had hoped for a little more magnification, but it can't stay FF amd be much larger I suppose.

Anyway, it works. Thanks a million for posting such a simple and good idea.

Now, could someone please put together a a magnifier that will give FF and 2.5x

I got mine made today!!. Made difference on my 20D. My only peeb is that the eye piece cannot be aligned to the VF straight. It is about 2mm Off Center. Also if you make the hood on the rim like dan, it's harder to align your eye to see the whole frame. I took the middle route, and I took out the rubber rim from DK17M and then I but the DK-2 hood right behind the rim. For me this set up is the perfect middle ground between Dan's and Steve's

chocy wrote:
I got mine made today!!. Made difference on my 20D. My only peeb is that the eye piece cannot be aligned to the VF straight. It is about 2mm Off Center. Also if you make the hood on the rim like dan, it's harder to align your eye to see the whole frame. I took the middle route, and I took out the rubber rim from DK17M and then I but the DK-2 hood right behind the rim. For me this set up is the perfect middle ground between Dan's and Steve's

My adapter seems to have a little play on my setup. Even though it slides on without any worry of it falling off, I can slide it left and right about 2mm. Looking at the adapter base, it looks like Nikon's rectangular eyepieces have a slightly wider rim than Canon's. Still, I don't seem to have any problem centering my eye like you mentioned regardless of the left/right position. This is probably because I have the the hood right against the base. This was done by attaching the hood directly onto the DK-17m before screwing it on to the base. My settup is just like the pictures on the very first post of this thread. Actually, it's the exact same one.

Oh no I didn't mean off center side ways. Sorry. Actually mine doesn't have any play and it is snug fit. It is not off center sideways it just can't slide in all the way (Nikon seems to have grooves on the top and 20D doesn't) so the bottom corners are slighty croped out. I trimed the top edge so it is better but it isn't dead center still. This doesn't effect the viewing though

Ok... got mine put together last week. Made a booboo by not quite filing enough before I tried to put it together so the filed piece snapped on the thinnest edge of the ring but hey... that's what epoxy is for.

I attached the hood directly onto the DK-17M before screwing it on to the base like some others and it seems to work fine that way. Used the new eyepiece on a photoshoot and took about 350 shots with it. The 1.2X mag isn't that much, but it makes a difference and it was much more comfortable. This eyepiece will be staying on the camera (XT/350D).

I was worried that I might have diopter problems. I have to dial up +1.00 correction without the new eyepiece. I can still get it focused for my eye even with the custom eyepiece.

I see B&H sold out of the DK-17M again. Good luck to those still trying to find the parts.

The DK-2 eyecup does not appear to have threads... is this correct? I am using a non-magnified Nikon eyepiece setup similar to this except that it uses the DK-3 threaded eyecup.

Once the magnifier is back in stock, I'll be jumping on this. Nikon seems to give a damn about viewfinders much more than Canon does.

So I just put one of these together for my XT/350D. It kicks some serious booty. The 1.2x magnification is more signifcant than I expected.

For my construction I actually was able with some care in dremeling and hand filing of the adapter to get a interference/friction fit and didn't need any epoxy. Took some extra time, but in the end I got it to snap flush with the adapter.

I opted to put the hood just behind the intended mounting flange to get the eye a little closer and have a good view of the entire image and status display like the original poster. I removed the rubber ring from the DK-17M to move the hood a little further out as another poster suggested. It seemed with it mounted on the intended flange it kept my eye just a tad too far away.

Anyway, I haven't been able to fiddle with it too much so far, but from the little handling I have had I absolutely love it. Thanks for the great thread!

Ken

Sorry for second post, but wanted to add for anyone else considering this or finding this thread in the archive. Since the 2370 adapter is so cheap (couple of bucks) you might as well buy a couple of them when you order in case you break or mangle one while filing/dremmeling. Less chance you'll need epoxy or have to order a replacement and pay three times as much in shipping!

Ken

rathman wrote:
I originally thought that this idea was new but running a search shows that the same procedure has been done for many different cameras in many different ways. No sense in re-inventing the wheel like I did. Here are some links.

On a D70:
http://blog.webs-tv.net/f717man/article/615572




If you look at this URL, he used a step-up ring to secure the DK-17M to the 2370 eyepiece adapter. Why do you need to enlarge the adapter?

Dragon wrote:
On a D70:
http://blog.webs-tv.net/f717man/article/615572
If you look at this URL, he used a step-up ring to secure the DK-17M to the 2370 eyepiece adapter. Why do you need to enlarge the adapter?




Can you elaborate a bit on this step-up ring? The link provided is in a language I cannot read and the photo does not reveal the step-up ring.

>> Can you elaborate a bit on this step-up ring? The link provided is in a language I cannot read and the photo does not reveal the step-up ring.


Well. in the pictures that he's shown, the piece on the top right is a step ring. He said in his blog that the assembly time is in a few seconds. I don't know if this ring is a Nikon product or something specially made.

Yeah, sure looks like he has some sort of step up ring. The downside to that is that I really wanted to get the magnifier as flush to the viewfinder as I possibly could so I wouldn't chop off any of the image or status information. With the magnifier further back on account of the adapter I think you'd start to lose the corners. Still, definately looks easier!

Ken

http://blog.webs-tv.net/f717man/article/615572

If anybody can identify that ring, that would be super!