Nikon F Prism Accessories

SF-1 Ready Light Adapter

Nikon Description:
Fits the eyepiece of the Nikon F and Nikkormat cameras. In this way, you can determine speedlight readiness without removing your eye from the viewfinder; you can compose and focus while the unit is charging and be ready to fire when the pilot light comes on. The pilot lamp goes out after firing, indicating that the speedlight has fired.

This accessory consists of an adapter that screws into your eyepiece and two cords coming off the adapter's left side: the top one is connected to your camera's PC socket, and the bottom one has a pronged plug to go into your speedlight. Thus it also handles camera-flash sync, obviating the need for the SC-5/6/7.

DL-1 Photomic Illuminator

The DL-1 is a simple device designed to cast light through the meter-needle illuminating window on top of Photomic prisms. It attaches to the eyepiece via the threaded mount, and has two controls, on (on the side) and off (on the top) which operate in the same way as the Photomic FTn's on/off: pressing the "on" button into the DL-1's side pops the "off" button out, and vice versa. It is powered by a single PX-13 mercury battery (although you can probably use the alkaline replacement without much deleterious effect).

Viewfinder Diopters

Very old diopters slip over the rectangular eyepiece found on most eyelevel finders. Newer diopters use the standard thread system found on F Apollo and later cameras, as well as most of the Photomic finders.

Nikon says that their prisms have a built-in diopter of -1, and the rating of the added diopter (+5, -3, etc.) is the diopter power of the combined diopter and prism eyepiece. Thus, a -3 diopter is, by itself, a -2 lens.

Eyepiece Magnifier

This is a fairly simple device which screws into the eyepiece and provides 2x magnification of the center of the view. It flips out of the way when not needed. The truly excellent added bonus is the built-in diopter correction from -4 to +2 (which acts just as an added diopter, so the total correction, with the prism's built-in correction, ranges from -5 to +1). Yes, I watched Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure last weekend.

Right-Angle Viewing Adapter

As implied, this also screws into the eyepiece and allows you to put your eye at right angles to the lens's axis. It is most useful for low-ground work, when the alternative would be to lie flat on the ground and peer through the eyepiece. The earliest versions have dioptric correction for diopters -5 to +3, although the later DR-3, which is compatible with threaded F prism eyepieces, offers a lockable diopter correction.

Rubber Eyecup

Like virtually everything else, it screws into the eyepiece. It was designed to mask out stray light and improve finder contrast. Presumably, you can use a more modern replacement if necessary. One thing to consider is that, as the metering system is in the prism, stray light entering the finder through the eyepiece may influence the meter reading.

Accessory Eyecup Adapter

Most Nikon F's with the eyelevel prism will have the rectangular eyepiece, to which fairly few accessories can be attached. This adapter changes the attachment method over from a slip-on bit to a screw-in socket (and then you can use most anything manufactured for Nikon standard-sized eyepiece up until 1982 (when the HP DE-3 appeared).

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