Crosshair viewfinder for filming fast moving objects

If you have never tried to film small, very fast moving objects at some distance with with a zoom lens camera, you will probably not understand why this cross-hair viewfinder is a very valuable addition to your camera.

A perfect application is filming a remote controlled model airplane (or multi rotor drone). In bright sunlight, the displays are typically hard to see, the plane is extremely small on the display, moves fast and changes direction very abruptly. Once you loose the object out of the view of your display, you will have a very hard time to find it again, as you don't know which way it went.

But also filming real size planes or helicopters at a distance with a zoom camera in front of a blue or white sky, or a boat far out on the ocean, is tricky for similar reasons.

This little print (44 minutes in 0.12mm fine setting on an Ender 3 Pro) helps a lot. Simply put it in between the screw of a selfie stick (or short monopod) and the camera and tighten the screw. Push the end of the stick into you right right shoulder to have a fixed point of contact on you body, which is in a relatively stable position towards you eyes. Close one eye, point the cross-hair to a well visible object at some distance and then adjust your camera on the stick until the object is in the middle of your display. Now the whole system is calibrated and will repeatably point the camera to what you see in the cross-hair.

Using a stick pushed into your shoulder is anyway highly recommended, as it stabilizes the video a lot and makes the difference between a shaky recording that makes you sick and a professionally looking video that others enjoy to watch. (And that is still true, even if your camera has build-in image stabilization, especially at a long focus length.)

One hint on the best suited color for this print. I found that in front of a very bright blue sky, it most reasonable to use a rather dark and red-ish color (as red is complimentary to blue). So I went for metallic red from DasFilament.de.

Have fun with this print and let me know if it's helpful.

Take care everyone and play safe!