Having recently had a pretty torrid time trying to keep up with some House Martins catching flies on the wing I bought one of the Olympus EE-1 sights. This is (AFAIK) the first Red Dot sight designed explicitly for photography, rather than buying a cheapo one from eBay/Amazon and bodging it onto a camera somehow.
I think it's probably too expensive (£99) for what it is, but I like that it's fairly rugged when collapsed (it pops open) so can be thrown into a camera bag.
Being new to this sort of thing it didn't work quite the way I expected, as the "dot" (which isn't really a dot, see the pics in the Amazon link below) moves around as your head moves, so you have to keep your head in a pretty consistent position.
I should point out that it fixes to a camera via a passive hotshoe connection, so should fit most cameras with standard hotshoes. You only get one "dot" pattern, one colour (Red) and five brightness settings. It has two wheels to set dot vertical and horizontal position.
It doesn't lock open (which may be a good thing if you hit something against it) but that means you can't have your face right up against it as it'll close a little and throw everything off. I tried one suggestion of holding the camera in front of you with the strap tight against your neck to help fix the camera-head position, which works quite well, but decided I preferred my eye much closer to the sight so the dot is smaller and the view through the sight wider (you can see around it as well, obviously).
If anybody's interested I can post some pictures and more info. I'd also like to hear from people using RDSs and how they get on.
Alternative options include getting a bracket such as:
Xtend-a-Sight Plus
Blitz Hotshoe dSLR Camera Adapter
...or just any hotshoe adapter for a flash and glue it onto the sight.
(Note I have no experience of any of these.)
and a sight like this:
(The difference is in the mounting bracket width. Ditto on my experience with them.)
The Olympus one is here:
I think it's probably too expensive (£99) for what it is, but I like that it's fairly rugged when collapsed (it pops open) so can be thrown into a camera bag.
Being new to this sort of thing it didn't work quite the way I expected, as the "dot" (which isn't really a dot, see the pics in the Amazon link below) moves around as your head moves, so you have to keep your head in a pretty consistent position.
I should point out that it fixes to a camera via a passive hotshoe connection, so should fit most cameras with standard hotshoes. You only get one "dot" pattern, one colour (Red) and five brightness settings. It has two wheels to set dot vertical and horizontal position.
It doesn't lock open (which may be a good thing if you hit something against it) but that means you can't have your face right up against it as it'll close a little and throw everything off. I tried one suggestion of holding the camera in front of you with the strap tight against your neck to help fix the camera-head position, which works quite well, but decided I preferred my eye much closer to the sight so the dot is smaller and the view through the sight wider (you can see around it as well, obviously).
If anybody's interested I can post some pictures and more info. I'd also like to hear from people using RDSs and how they get on.
Alternative options include getting a bracket such as:
Xtend-a-Sight Plus
Blitz Hotshoe dSLR Camera Adapter
...or just any hotshoe adapter for a flash and glue it onto the sight.
(Note I have no experience of any of these.)
and a sight like this:
(The difference is in the mounting bracket width. Ditto on my experience with them.)
The Olympus one is here:
