| A grid screen can be a very useful item. What is it? Well, when you look
through the optical viewfinder of a film or digital interchangeable-lens
SLR (such as a Nikon F5 / D1x, Canon EOS / D10 etc.) you're actually looking
at an image projected onto a small piece of ground glass (about the size
of a 35mm film frame). The Split-Image or Microprism focus aid in the middle
of the screen is ground into the glass.
The better SLRs have interchangeable screens. Why would you want to change them? Most people don't - they're quite happy with the "standard" screen supplied with the camera, however some need specialised screens for specialised photographic tasks such as astro-photography, certain types of scientific photography and so on, and one type of screen is the Grid Screen. As the name implies, a grid screen is pretty much a regular screen with
grid lines etched into the glass, much like the lines on graph paper.
A simple grid screen might look like this: |
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| If you are photographing anything where you want to get the subject absolutely
horizontal (like a horizon), spot-on vertical (like a building) or smack-dab
square (as when you photograph a painting), a grid screen is the best thing
since sliced bread since you can line up the appropriate parts of the subject
with lines on the screen.
Great for those SLR users, but what about all of us with non-SLR digital cameras? This type of camera usually has two viewfinders - the little optical one, and the LCD screen on the back of the camera. Guess what? You can very easily put a Grid Screen on your camera's LCD
screen, and for next-to-no-money. Here's how. |