In article <4aqcus$3f6@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, distorted1@aol.com says...
>I had a long conversation about this problem with the author of theIn's
>and Out's of Focus, harold Merklinger. The problem that yo're having is
>really the mix of three problems. First, the Prism in the newer EOS
>cameras are now made of plastic, which is more prone to lateral color >and coma thtan good glass prisms are. Second, bright screens are >optimized for specific Fstops (making the faster lenses much harder to >accurately focus). Third, the field angle of the focus screen lenses >(which is how the newer bright scree=n are made) creates an astigmatic >double image toward the edge. The only way to fix these problems is to >have a screen you like cut to size. The viewfinder image will be much >darker than you're used to but will have far better snp focus. Maybe we >should start a company called 'Darkscreen'

Or a company called "Nikon" and put out models called "8008", "6006",
"N70", "N90", "F3", "F4", etc. with really good finders! ;-)
The advent of the compact camera body (Olympus), and hype about screen
brightness, did bring about the demise of the darkish, undistorted,
sharp SLR viewing screens (except in Nikons, of course! :-) of the Pentaxes, Minoltas, Canons, and, yeah, even some Nikons (though the
best finders [in the "F" series] just got brighter, while the other Nikon VF's got brighter, lost some corner sharpness, and acquired the
now fashionable pincushion distortion posessed by virtually all SLR
VF's made now - while maintaining excellent center sharpness). (If
you want to see what is possible in a viewfinder system, look at
[or through] a Nikon F3 - bright and sharp all over with all focal lengths and speeds of lenses attached to the camera, no distortion,
virtually all of the film area shown, and easy to see with glasses.)
With the advent of autofocus, I often wonder if viewfinders got worse
intentionally (to make people think they needed AF, or to cover up the
focus errors of AF that are so evident in a sharp finder) - I remember
being unable to manually focus lenses on an early Maxxum (and they then
put the same VF "technology" in their manual cameras [and the Leicaflex spinoff] - and I was still unable to focus a 50mm f1.4 with any of
those cameras [and there was no AF backup!] with the "Acutematte"
screen, or whatever it was called). Heck, to sum up: if you are unhappy
with your viewing screen, try a Nikon - they make nice ones (and a
bunch of nice [and sharp] lenses, too....;-). As far as I am concerned,
a camera system consists of a body to hold the film, a good viewfinder
so I have control over the image I am making, and a good set of lenses.
Hope this helps.