Search for 7D focusing screen

[lholmes549]

I have spent the last hour or so looking into focusing screens for the 7D as I was, until recently, under the impression that you could not change it.
Once I found out it was possible my mind immediately jumped to whether I could get a micro prism FS like the one I LOVE in the FTb, and sure enough, after a good search I finally found what I was looking for!

I had looked through split screens, matte screens, micro prisms and mixes of all the above but finally decided that all I wanted was a micro prism.

There were many good posts on forums and a few different options, I even had a look on eBay but decided against it.
In the end the best option seemed to be a screen from KatzEye which always got consistently gleaming reviews but seemed a little pricey at $105.00 + shipping from the US (I live in the UK), and an extra $55 if you wanted some treatment on it to make it brighter...
But then I found the wonderful focusingscreen.com (I know, how did I not find this first time...) which would appear to be based in Taiwan. It offers multiple types of screens for a multitude of cameras (even Nikon screens for Canon!) and has a brilliant page to explain all the types of screen as well as what they look like while focusing in real life! In addition to all of the above they also have installation guides, with photos, for so many cameras...
Really wish I had found this site first off, and maybe I should have but maybe someone else will find this useful!

Prices are a bit cheaper than KatzEye, and I get the impression they modify screens rather than produce their own but I could be completely wrong in this assumption.

Will post my thoughts when I get it!

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Be careful, don't lose any shims and pay careful attention as to their location. You may require different shims if you want to manually focus, since the focus screen position is critical.

 

[lholmes549]

Thanks for the advice, it's all welcome.

I think I've decided on the Canon EC-A screen, how likely is it that I'll need a different thickness of shim for that given that I'm using it in the 7D?

Also, on a scale of "Great, go for it" to "Don't even touch it" how good an idea is it to just buy a EC-A screen and cut it myself rather than pay over twice the price for someone to do it for me? I know how fragile the screens are so I'm naturally very wary...

 

[noisejammer]

The EC-A has a HUGE microprism region compared with the viewfinder in the 7D. It will seriously affect your exposure accuracy, but you can learn to compensate this.

It's easy to remove the screen from a 7D (just follow the instructions on the Katzeye site.) You can judge whether you'd be able to cut a piece of hard plastic accurately to the same shape without scratching it. Personally, I don't think you have a snowball's hope.

I've used screens from Katzeye and Britescreen. Katzeye was better.

 

[lholmes549]

The EC-A has a HUGE microprism region compared with the viewfinder in the 7D. It will seriously affect your exposure accuracy, but you can learn to compensate this.

It's easy to remove the screen from a 7D (just follow the instructions on the Katzeye site.) You can judge whether you'd be able to cut a piece of hard plastic accurately to the same shape without scratching it. Personally, I don't think you have a snowball's hope.

I've used screens from Katzeye and Britescreen. Katzeye was better.

I had expected to have to compensate exposure to some degree, but hadn't really considered the relative size of the microprism to the smaller viewfinder...will it really be that big and massively intrusive or will it just be marginally bigger?

Yeah, I have taken the focus screen out already just to check I can do it and it's really quite easy but they are so small and easily scratched I have my doubts about cutting it. Having said this there are a couple of people around the forums, and some videos, of people cutting them using scotch tape to stop scratching and cutting with a craft knife...this definitely is harder than it sounds or they make it look but I'm wondering if its worth a shot...

Only problem with Katzeye is it comes to about 50% more than the ec-a off focusingscreen.com and it's a split screen which wasn't my ideal.

Thanks for your input!

 

[lholmes549]

Can anyone give me an approximate size for the EC-A screen so I can compare to the 7D screen?

Thanks