Camera parts 2

Moving over to the centre of the EOS. There is the viewfinder, this gives a 100% coverage, vertical and horizontal of the effective pixel area. In other words "What You See Is What You Get". There is a a 0.7X magnification (-1 diopter with 50mm lens at infinity) and a 20mm eye point. For photographers who wear spectacles there shouldn't be any problems, I didn't find any myself. The eyepiece has a rubber mount, which will protect your glasses against scratches and for non spectacle wearers, stop the wind from making your eyes water. There is a dial offering an adjustment of -3.0 to +1 diopter just to the side of the viewfinder. With the rubber eyecup in place this offers good protection against accidental turning of the dial. On the other side is an eyepiece shutter, close this when you are not looking through the lens or when it is on a tripod, to prevent stray light from influencing the exposure.

The Eyepiece and rubber cup	Eyepiece shutter
The diopter settings wheel - (-3 to +1 diopter)	Eyepiece shutter in the closed position
More buttons to press	The rear view of the EOS 1Ds Mk II

There is a Focal plane mark on the pentaprism, in all the years as a photographer I have never known anyone that actually uses this, but it is still included on many pro cameras. The three buttons can be used individually to set Mode, AF or Metering type (spot, average etc). Or in combination to set drive, ISO, bracketing.

Memory card slots	Two cards can be fitted.

The EOS 1Ds Mk II can take two cards, a CompactFlash and/or a SD card. You must have at least one card fitted to operate the camera, but there is an option in the custom settings to allow you to shoot without a memory card, this would seem to be a pointless exercise unless you are shooting directly to a computer.

I am puzzled as to why a SD card format was chosen, why not two CF cards? You can select which card you want to store images on, or define the other card to store a backup image. The same filename/number can be used or set to another numbering. To make life more complicated or easier, you can create sets of folders on each card and define which folder you want to save the images on. You can even format the cards individually, this feature is for the person who likes to live on the edge, imagine formatting the wrong card. I can see the advantage of having two cards but would have liked some more advanced functionality, such as being able to transfer images from one card to another.