The CVF 'Spotlight' Series©
The CVF Series is the new kid on the block, and deserves some sp
ecial attention here. While the special introductory price of only $169 might get your attention (regular price: $199), you will find this instrument special in many important practical ways as well.
For one, it is a critical focuser. The word 'critical' has a very special meaning. In photography, it is normally used in referring to a 'critical grain focuser'. Professional photographers have been using high magnification grain focusers for quite some time to inspect 35mm slides close up for details normally missed by the naked eye. The underlying premise is that if you can see an imperfection, you can fix it. And the same applies to the CVF - except that instead of fixing the image afterwards, it fixes things before even taking the picture.
Magnifiers for use with 35mm film cameras have been around for a long time. Most fall into either the category of smoke-stack magnifiers or microscopes attached in place of a camera's prism, or add-on attachments which magnify the image on the prism a few times over. Both methods fail in some key respects. They usually do not provide enough magnification, and if they do, the light loss from the process is tremendous. This leads to adding bright-screens and other items to try to overcome this. Overall, while some of these devices can look impressive, they really do not perform as well as expected.
With the new 35mm DSLR cameras, the situation does not get any better - and can even get worse. While low magnification add-ons for these cameras are better than nothing, the quality and the design of the viewscreens are relatively terrible compared to those in the older 35mm film cameras. If you have one, you know this already. And most DSLRs do not even allow for interchanging viewscreens or easily attaching any auxillary device. And forget about magnifying the pixels on the LCD screen. You get bigger pixels to look at, but very little improvement in resolution.
Overall, the new CVF overcomes both of the issues above by using a high-power lupe in conjunction with a very special ground glass viewscreen. Having been designed for critical focusing from the bottom up instead of as an afterthought, it is guaranteed to outperform any other 35mm focusing device available today. The image you see is really what you will get. You can read more about its fine features here.
We think the CVF really is pretty special and hope you will too. Please feel free to write or call for more information anytime. And a really big thanks to everyone who helped us in its development. - Richard