NeoLucida Plus - a Modern Camera lucida Drawing Tool Lets You Trace What You See.

This is exactly what I was looking for as a designer looking to aid in plen aire and figure drawing studies. This will not magically make you a better artist, but rather it will help cut down on time spent verifying angles, proportions and where light/shadow fall.If you do a little searching you can find public domain publications on suggested use of the camera lucida, better than a short review can say.Don't expect this to solve all of your art problems, but if you have realistic expectations and willing to figure out clever solutions to play with the tool or as a way to study, it can be a serious workhorse. Just draw and paint more!

Fantastic upgrade to the original. I have all three version of the neolucida and this one is my favorite to work with.

The viewing lens area is very small and difficult to use. It's like using a microscope in high school. There are no instructions included with the piece, and the videos online are not helpful. The videos are more about selling the item, not how to use it and how to troubleshoot it.I'm returning it to Amazon.

Screen is really too small for an old person to use. Great idea but too hard to use

As other reviewers wrote, it's fairly hard to use. You need to have the eye fairly close to it for it to work, but it does work with glasses. Watch out for your hair fringe though: it's easy to obscure your view and not notice it and be confused that it stopped working. One thing that's not obvious is that the distance to the object has a huge effect on ease of use: if you paint something more than a meter away, you won't be able to focus on it and the paper at the same time. Eyes simply don't work this way. Works perfectly for drawing close-by objects, like still life though. And it's still much better for replicating nature than doing the old thumb and pencil method. Overall it's fairly well-made though I'm not sure an old style mechanism, with just few rods that you could tighten, instead of this semi-flexible stand wouldn't work better; this one is both too stiff and too springy to precisely position. I found it easier to just move the paper to the correct place than adjust the camera obscura.Overall I'm happy with the purchase, but I already knew what I'm getting into. I wouldn't recommend it as a surprise gift to a budding artist.

A very famous current artist said it took him a year to leaarn to use it properly, so keep practicing! If you want to imitate Canaletto, then this is the tool to use! I bought it to work on portraits of six year old twin grandbabies...without it the sittings would be a wreck!

Easy to put together. Does take practice. Great gift as well.

Great art student gift!!