Portkeys LEYE 4K HD Camera Viewfinder for Z Cam, BMPCC, Canon C7
Portkeys LEYE HD camera viewfinder is a small and light and budget-friendly EVF, offering film and television production small teams more choices. With the camera’s video functions become stronger and stronger, and the like are upgrading constantly. Under this trend, Portkeys also offers a crisp viewing option for your Mirrorless camera, Z CAM or other camera lacking an integrated viewfinder. This viewfinder has an HDMI input that supports up to UHD 4K30 video and an HDMI output supporting up to 1080p60 video.
The appearance design of Portkeys LEYE 4K HD EVF
The whole body of the LYEY viewfinder is made of aluminum alloy and ABS engineering plastic structure, which controls the weight of 232g, 106x78x70mm and 2.4-inch screen.
Its specially advertised that red oak diopter lens can be rotated to adjust the diopter and the adjustable range of 800 degrees to -300 degrees, at the same time, it is convenient for myopia or farsightedness people.
What’s more, the back of the round sponge eye mask in addition to making monocular viewing more comfortable, but also minimize external light interference.
The overall button and the interface part are concentrated in the far end away from the human eye.
The upper F1~F4 button can customize the functions of auxiliary focus, false color, waveform and so on. On the left are the Menu and select buttons. On the right, from top to bottom is the standard HDMI port, 7-24 V DC power port, and a USB port.
The lower part of the connection is special with three common 1/4 thread mouth, and NATO slide groove and Alai positioning pin groove. Those groove slide can be easily connected to Portkeys or third party manufacturers of support, and Alai positioning pin groove, from this name you can also see the positioning of this product.
Basic parameters and monitoring function of Portkeys LEYE HD camera viewfinder
The Portkeys LEYE viewfinder has a 2.4-inch screen with a 1440X900 resolution and 8bit color depth. It supports HDMI input at up to 4096 x 2160p 24Hz, 3840 x 2160p 30Hz and 1920 x 1080p,60Hz.
LEYE viewfinder has all kinds of functions. It’s hard to imagine that such a small viewfinder can achieve advanced functions, such as false color, focus assist, 3D LUT, brightness waveform, etc..
The 3D LUT features a USB port on the viewfinder via a USB flash drive, which can store up to 20 LUT files at the same time.
Photographers who have used false color mode will certainly feel that false color mode is a powerful help for picture details. In addition, the image anamorphic, histogram, contrast, saturation, sharpness and other monitoring functions are also equipped.
Portkeys LEYE HD camera viewfinder screen brightness test
1. The illuminance test
Photographers who often work outside may annoy the bright light, which is troublesome to look at the screen. LEYE’s screen brightness is 300 nit while mobile phone people commonly used averagely around 500 nit brightness.
The summer sun’s illumination is in 60000 Lux to 100000 Lux. In order to test the effect of the screen of LEYE, the relative single lamp was used to simulate the sun, we let the camera screen receives the intensity of illumination at about 60000 Lux.
As a result, the camera screen is bouncing between 300Lux and 4000Lux. Every time has different results, which is caused by the reflection from certain angles we usually feel.
So, we need a LEYE viewfinder in a shooting. It is largely unaffected with the screen brightness between 50Lux and 60Lux, when add a sponge eye mask can be used to further control the lighting around 12Lux.
Tests have shown that one of the advantages of an eye viewfinder is that it can be protected from outside light interference, and a simple eye mask can actually block out a lot of outside light interference.
2. Refresh rate
We connected the LEYE viewfinder to the computer, and it can be seen in the Windows system that the LEYE viewfinder reached a refresh rate of 60Hz, which provided a better viewing experience for the photographer.
Some of these functions can be opened at the same time, such as auxiliary function, waveform brightness map, LUT reduction, all of which can be set in F1, F2, and F3 keys. Then we can use it to deal with more complex situations. The F4 key is for false color or zooming, which is convenient to view picture exposure details. Of course, you can also DIY menu Settings in terms of the scene and use habits.
Summary
As the third camera viewfinder, Portkeys LEYE is extremely cost-effective at a price of $399. Meanwhile, it is more delicate and exquisite than conventional camera viewfinders. It would be very attractive for photographers who usually work outside and has precise exposure requirements.
Undoubtedly, fills the low-priced market of this type of product. Considering its small size compared with traditional camera viewfinders, it is even more attractive.
For photographers who work outdoors for a long time and have precise requirements for exposure, this viewfinder should be very attractive, but LEYE can only rely on an external power supply, that is, V-mount battery, 970 battery, or power bank, considering its only 3W operating power consumption, if a rechargeable battery can be built into the LEYE, it should be able to increase a lot of usage scenarios.
Advantages:
1. The display effect will not be affected by the environment.
2. High performance-price ratio.
3. You can get started quickly.
Disadvantages:
1. Blind operation is easy to accidentally touch.
2. Power supply mode restrictions.
