Viewfinders

[Greg Beetham]

The viewfinder topic has cropped up quite a bit of late, so I thought I'd find something on it, even if a little out of date, this is good and definitely worth a read, exposes the hidden dirty little lies that you get fed by the manufacturers and some (miss-preconceptions) to a great extent.
http://luminous-landscape.com/tutorials ... ders.shtml
Greg

[bfitzgerald]

If you followed that Greg you would never have got a Dynax 60 VF
The article is fair enough, it is very much expected though with lower priced bodies to get less magnification, a penta mirror, and on average 90% coverage.

I still have my old Oly bridge camera and that has a measly 85%!
You can get used to it, being honest the only improvement on DSLR's is the now normal "95% coverage" for low to mid bodies and it gets better when you go up in price more 100% VF's around now.

Size wise Digital has been disappointing esp lower down if they had the 95% coverage and viewfinders that have 0.90x mag even budget ones things would be much better. The crop factor does not help here.

I paid £11 for a new Dynax 5 from a German seller, I ain't complaining about 0.75x mag or 90% coverage at that price. 0.75x is actually pretty large compared to my Km5d and A200 VF size. I'd love a 100% VF on all bodies but I am sure there is a cost argument that prevents that (accuracy for one)

[Greg Beetham]

Yeah Barry point taken, although I never got around to carefully comparing the Dynax 60 OVF too the X700's just to see what difference there was, I guess I'm sort of used too the aspect given by a typical APS-C OVF now and the memory has dimmed about FF ones, but last time I did use it I didn't think it was all 'that' bad. When you look through a FF OVF, even a fairly ordinary one by FF standards it still has the drop on a reasonable APS-C one I think.
The only APS-C OVF I've seen so far that gives me the 'feel at home' is the one on the A700. But then, the ones on the A100 and KM5D aren't really 'bad' it's just they aren't up too the A700 standard. To be even handed I reckon you would have to take onboard how much the A100 cost at release compared too the A700 at release.
I think the camera cos. must be feeling the pinch now more than ever, if you 'rembering back' were to compare a typical film SLR, and what's in the box, too a similar camera now, the extras that come with a DSLR are fairly substantial costwise to the camera co. by comparison, what with the sensor itself, the lithium rechargable battery and charger, the hi-res rear review screen, the image processing power GPU/CPU, software, memory ports etc...those are all extras that didn't come with a film camera, so the incentive must be great to try too chintz wherever they can.
Greg

[bfitzgerald]

Looking over the years the cost of electronics has fallen hugely, consider PC's, tv's, hi-fi's all once expensive products now affordable to just about everyone.

Whilst we are on the VF subject I keep seeing this "A77" talk flying around and it does appear Sony will bring an OVF and an EVF semi pro model to market. Nice to have a choice I guess but I stand by my thoughts in that Sony will be the first company to drop OVF's, even more so as they are happy to compromise the VF on the A560/580 models with fast AF live view. But again I think the fixed mirror cameras are ultimately a stop gap to completely mirror less ones and a full range of EVF models, no idea what they plan for FF DSLR's.

Of course there is still much pain for EVF fans with no surgery currently available to make analogue eyes digital Everything can be digital but ultimately it all becomes analogue in the end.

[Greg Beetham]

If Sony phase the OVF out in the procumers section it will be a case of... Q: How to get Sony started in a small DSLR camera busyness. A: Give em a large one.
Greg