Friday Mar 16th 2007
FedEX just brought my Digilux 3 back from KatzEye Optics, they had it since the beginning of the week and have replaced the original focusing screen with a opti-brite screen with a split-screen and microprisme focusing aid.

Let me hurry and say that the people at KatzEye was great to work with, and their product apears to work as advertised. They kindly worked with me when I asked if the screen for the Olympus 330 would work in the Digilux 3 since the camera is said to have the same mirror box as the 330, after a quick conversation about this I send my camera to them for instalation and testing, two days ago they called me to say they had finished testing the new screen in my Leica and could confirm that it worked 100%. This means that both Leica Digilux and Panasonic L1 will work with this screen.

It is a very different feeling to have a 1980 focusing aid in the viewfinder of a digital camera, and I would not have bothered if I did not want to use manual lenses on my Leica. However I DO have a bunch of good manual lenses (or rather other brand auto-focus lenses with manual focusing rings). Changing the focusing screen have practically opened a new door by significantly improving the comfort of using manual lenses compared to focusing on a clearn screen with these, particularly because the 4:3 systems smaller viewfinder seems harder to focus on a clean screen than my full-frame cameras. Replacing the screen have made it very acceptable to use the camera with manual lenses.

There it is - the new focusing screen in my Leica Digilux 3, no markings, just a split screen in the center. interestingly there have been no affect on the lightmeter even at spot-meter settings at all, causing the guess that the lightmeter might be the same chipused for auto-focus. Note that the light meter do not work terrible well with manual lenses.

So far I have tested it with my Nikkon 300mm and, once getting used to the split-screen all over, seem to be pulling out rather consistent focus from the manual lens. mounted on the Leica with a lens adaptor.

Note that you MUST make a real baffle for the lens as it otherwise will have way too much stray light in the mirrorbox causing low contrast and poor metering results.