Welcome to my Olympus C-5050 Page

My first digital camera. On a bright sunny day, the LCD is nearly impossible to see. I have tried some open sun shade hoods but it is still difficult to view the lcd screen. As you can see from the picture below. The shade is attached to the camera by using the tripod socket and is totally enclosed.

The lens is from a loupe that I found at Radio Shack(63-8054 $6.99). It is a 10x loupe in two parts a 6x loupe and a 4x loupe. I used the 4x loupe for this project. The hood is made from a piece of tin and is shaped like a cone. The height is equal to the focal length of the 4x loupe. The large circumference is equal to the perimeter of the C-5050 lcd. The small circumference is equal to that of the 4x loupe. I have allowed 4mm of extra material so that the seam could be soldered together. After the cone was assembled I carefully measured around the circumference and marked of the length equal to each side (30,38,30,38) of the lcd. The shade was then bent at each of these marks to form a rectangle.

The bracket is made from 3mm aluminum with a rectangular cutout to match the cone. A hole was drilled and taped for 1/4-20 thread. The mounting screw has part of its length undercut so that it will not fall out when the bracket is not attached to a camera. The bracket was then bent at 90'. I cemented the cone in place with a two part epoxy. The loupe was epoxied in place and both the inside and outside of the cone was painted with a flat black paint.

To complete the assembly, some black velvet was glued to the face of the bracket that came in contact with the liquid crystal display.

There is a piece of metal that is attached to the bracket near the mounting screw. On the bottom of the C-5050 is a rubber pad to the left of the mounting hole. This spacer is used to make the bracket level when the mounting screw is tighten securely.

This is a view of the liquid crystal display as viewed from the eye position. The unsharpness is not as viewed on the screen, but rather trying to get a picture with another digital camera.

Model II sunshade is attached directly to the lcd by using the two protrusions on each side of the lcd. As can be seen is this view the metal is shaped to slide over those protrusions. The undercut at the bottom of shade is covered with a piece of black velvet so it will not scratch the surface of lcd.

To shape the metal I used a die (block of 6mm steel plate) with a hacksaw cut about 2mm deep in one side. The punch is made from a thin piece of steel that was filed to be thin enough to fit into the slot, plus the thickness of the tin that I used for the shade.

Shown here is a piece of the tin that is shaped by the punch and die.

In this side view, notice the the shaped portion does not extend the full width.

The eye piece is the same as in the first shade (Radio Shack (63-8054 $6.99). After the lens was removed from the holder it took a little modification with a hand file to make is round. After it was placed in the sun shade, I soldered some tabs on the inside to prevent it from moving.

When the sun shade was in position, it was secure at the top of the lcd. The bottom side could easily be raised up because there was no protrusions on the bottom edge. To get around this problem I used two pieces #22 awg solid tinned copper wire. These pieces of wire were epoxied in line with the protrusions on lcd. When the epoxy was cured, I carefully sanded the area smooth. Now when the sun shade is slid over the lcd, it moves easily and is quite secure.

Here is the finished sun shade. I quite enjoy using it for all occasions. Its very much like having a single lens reflex viewing system. There is slight magnification (4x) when viewing the scren and it helps to see the details of the image.

In both of the above pictures, there are two anti-twist plates, made of brass sheet stock. There is one between the flash bracket and rotating bracket. The second is between the rotating bracket and the camera.