Hey Guys, I desprately wanted the gridlines in the viewfinder so I ordered the focusing screen from an online store and here we go. Now as a disclaimer, I have never done this before nor have I read any instuctions on how to do this. I just opened up the D3 and got to work. This is what I did to replace it, this is NOT a howto guide. Just look at what I did and I took a few pics along the way so make your own judgements, K? K.
Ok, there is the box and the insides.
Inside the D3 is a small leaver, you can press down on that and down falls the tray that holds the focusing screen. The tray will come to a rest at the bottom but will not touch the reflex mirror. With the supplied tweasers I took the OEM focusing screen and place it into the little holder that Nikon built into the E-Type box to the right of the new screen. Then take the new focusing screen and put it back in the holder. With the tweesers lift it back into place and it will latch back up.
I had to do this several times. There was quite a lot of dust and it took awhile to blow it all away.
The grid lines are not “On Demand” They are just there. The screen is a lot clearer than the matte of the OEM screen and the lines are very thin, much thinner than the ones in the D200.
I hope this gives insight into how it’s done.
February 10th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Cool project. I’ve wanted to get one of those replacement screens for my 30D that has the split focusing screen.
I noticed on some of the discussion about these replacement screens that (for Canon anyway) they can effect the metering system by 1 or 2 thirds of a stop… I think it has something to do with the way it slightly changes how things reflect in there.
Anyway, probably a little late to to an A/B test, but have you seen/noticed anything like that?
February 11th, 2008 at 7:26 am
There is no change to the metering function of the camera. Metering occurs before it get’s to the focusing screen I think so I don’t see how it could effect the metering. But even if it’s afterwards I haven’t seen any since I shoot the fashion show all is good and I am happy with the results.