What a discovery! While writing my German post on how easy it is to build your own eyepiece or viewfinder cover, I was really amazed and confused as my post was relying on that small piece of plastic we call “Heftstreifen”. What we use here at our daily business in offices for paperwork is something that seems not to be used at all outside of Germany and hard to find. These strips just cost a few cent. But already in England, USA or Canada it seems you won’t find them in quantity or quality we have here. Finally I found out that these stripes do exists at least in the UK and called “ polypropylene fasteners to bind and file punched documents “. But for the US it seems they don’t have these fasteners at all, but lay back I just found a similar donator which will deliver the needed plastic to build your eyepiece cover across the ocean. Look out for a clear view folder .

Here are the tools you will need to build your do it yourself viewfinder coverage. Of course instead of the “Heftstreifen” use the plastic of the fastener or clear view folder! You will need a ruler, scissors, a cuter with a trencher, a pen and bit of patience to find the exact size you will need.

That black plastic stripe at the image is what we call “Heftstreifen” a small organizer to bind loose sheets of paper together that then will go into a bigger binder or organizer – you know now what you can use instead.

As a starting point, to find out the needed size of the plastic stripe that will cover your viewfinder at the end, take off the eyepiece that is attached to the cameras viewfinder. Then measure the width of the viewfinder and use your pen to sketch a rectangle which is having the width of what you just have measured and for the length of the rectangle please take least a minimum of the double what you have measured or even longer. The extra size will give you grip to pull out the cover after usage. Now cut out that sketched rectangle.

You now should have a piece of plastic like the above pieces to the left at the above image. Put the eyepiece back to your cameras viewfinder and try to push the cut out piece between the eyepiece and the viewfinder. If it won’t fit don’t push it too hard otherwise you may damage your viewfinder or eyepiece, it is your own risk to follow my DIY tip! Simply use the cutter and ruler to chop off just a tiny little stripe from your cut out rectangles longer side. Try if it will now slip easily into the gap between the eyepiece and viewfinder, if it still is not gently moving into the slot repeat to chop off a tiny bit more until it will fit.

To make it even more slide in easily you can cut a bit of the corners or try to make these round but be careful not to remove to much otherwise the cover will not entirely cover.

Ok now when you find that the cover you just made fit’s too loose you might have chopped off to much already or the plastic is just too thin. Here is what you can try to do:

• You can twist your cover with Sellotape or Scotch tape, but I would not recommend that, as the glue on the tape may stick once upon a time your eyepiece or viewfinder, if it gets to hot or after heavy usage of your cover the glue can melt and stick on your camera instead
• You can just take a second cover stripe and push two of your cover stripes into the gap
• You can make your rectangle even longer and bend it, so you would have doubled the thickness of the plastic that way
• You can use a laminating machine and laminate your cover which then will give an extra layer of plastic to your cover, you may need to adjust the width of your cover and make it a bit smaller as the laminate plastic needs to overlap the cover to stick together on the edges, you will need to experiment a little around to find out the best sizes

I found that doubling the length of my cover and bending it like it is shown above is just what I need to have, to make my cover slide in easily enough but not to sit too loose and fall off. Here is how my DIY cover is going to be used and how it covers my viewfinder, without the need to take the eyepiece off and to place the manufacturers eyepiece cap on the viewfinder to darken and cover it.

Why do you need an eyepiece cover? Or why should you use an eyepiece cover? If you take long exposures or if you use a tripod and will not stand right behind your camera. On a bright and sunny day the sunshine or light might fall into your viewfinder glass while taking photos. This extra light may cause issues on your photos, the extra light that will also hit your cameras sensor will result in reducing the contrast of your image, you may also find shadows or even glares and flares on your picture as the light gets bounced within your cameras body while taking the photo. To prevent all this simply cover our viewfinder!

The advantage of your ‘do it yourself’ eyepiece cover is, easy usage, it is cheap and reproducible if you loose it, you don’t need to take off your eyepiece again and again which you might loose that way sometime, and such an eyepiece is much more expensive than your DIY eyepiece cover.

I hope you found this tiny tip useful!? Maybe you find any other material that will work for you, you may have any other design that works better for you to cover your viewfinder? Just let us know and share your thoughts using the comments section below….