Is it worthwhile to try and cover the eyepiece of my camera when shooting remotely? Secondly how do I do it?
I have been putting a piece of black sock on the camera, which is not good. I also tried to look for a product on Amazon but could not find one. I have been told that my picture can be milky if the eyepiece is not covered. Is that true?
On my camera there is a piece of silicone rubber on the Strap designed to do just this. You remove the mounted eyepiece and then put the silicon you have on your strap onto the camera.
Is it Worth? Yes IF the light is coming from behind.
This topic has been covered before, therefore worth a visit Does a viewfinder cover really make a difference?
Regarding specifically having a cover for the Canon 7D, it comes on the strap itself. If it is not on the strap, then check the camera box.
Is it worth using this silicon cover? in my opinion, Not really! The problem is that you have to take off the viewfinder cup to slide this on, and that can be a pain specially if you happen to be taking a night shot somewhere in a field, and accidentally drop it! Now you are left without a viewfinder hood! Use a small but thick micro fibre cloth to drape over the viewfinder instead.
Regarding your concerns about the image being milky; I have never heard of that, but here is a brief explanation as to what is happening with the light coming in to your camera.
When light comes in from the front of your lens, it passes through all the glass elements, hits the mirror, bounces to the pentaprism which then further bounces it around itself and out of the view finder. The light meter of the camera is located in the path of this light. The issue is, as well as light going out of the view finder, it can also travel in, and if you happen to be in an exposure mode other than full manual, then there is a possibility of the metering being altered due to this extra light.
However, for the majority of the photos, any exposure changes are too minute to have a visible effect as you will have your eye over the view finder and the shutter is fairly quick to have an effect.
It becomes an issue when you have longer exposures and specially where you have ambient or light behind you that can then enter the view finder! A typical example will be when using an ND filter and using long exposures with the camera set to auto modes on a bright sunny day. Night time photography when there is light behind you, sometimes light that you may not physically be able to see immediately but 20/30 seconds can make a big difference.
As an answer points out, the rubber cover comes on the cheapo strap. I slide that off the ribbon ans just keep the "handle" wit the attached thingie.
However, I just use the camera strap: not that nugget, but the shoulder bad and webbing of the strap I really use. I drape it around the apex of the camera so it hugs the viewfinder like it's the back of his neck.
But... I've not bothered with that since going digital. Except when a strong window light was directly behind me, and I just held my hand near the viewfinder to shade it.
I would also note that with "live view" and a tilted LCD you might not need ready access to the viewfinder. And you carry painter's tape or gaff tape, right? In a more complex situation, a bit of gaff tape can be used to fashon a nice shade-hood around the viewfinder. (Gaff tape is better than painter's tape because it is designed to be truely opaque and deaden reflections too. It's like duck tape, but goes in the camera bag)
