On Fri, May 22, 2009 14:54, Don Roberts wrote: > I have a couple of digital point and shoots that have only LCD viewing, > no view finder, and they drive me nuts in bright sunlight. I am > guessing at cropping much more than I like. I don't think the > technology is there yet to make an LCD easily viewable in all light > conditions. So that is my reason for wanting a view finder. I don't > know if that is Johnathan's. Ah, sunlight. I've heard of that. I suppose I might take as many as 5% or even slightly more of my pictures outside, but many of them I wasn't actually in the sun for. I got used to looking at the LCD at weird angles where you could barely see the edges of things, and doing my framing that way, from holding the camera at weird angles. And in the sun, I can see at least that much, so it doesn't bother me much. An EVF gives you a really good sunshade around its LCD. Meanwhile, I can see *amazingly* much more in dark conditions than I could through viewfinders. Unfortunately it's tied up with fast DSLR autofocus (partially transparent spots in the mirror, plus a secondary mirror, are how the image gets to the special AF sensors, which are much faster than contrast-based AF off the main sensor). A lot of camera shake comes from the mirror slap, a lot of noise comes from the mirror, a lot of expense comes from the mirror and pentaprism, limitations on flange distance come from the need to have a big mirror in there, and so forth. I could sure stand to get rid of the whole reflex system, if it weren't for the AF performance issue. -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
