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February 13, 2006
[ THE MATTER OF THE MISSING VIEWFINDER ]
[ Casio EX S600 camera with an old Agfa slide viewer attched — making an ersatz electronic viewfinder ]
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Mr John Varley of Abbotsford writes to Livewire to complain that he has become “quite sick of” the constant lament in the dpexpert camera reviews along the lines of “great camera but pity about the lack of an optical viewfinder.”
Mr Varley is quite right. The line does pop up with tedious regularity in reviews of compact digital cameras. A bit like the recurring refrain in motor car road tests: “Against: space saver spare tyre.” Motoring writers detest those dinky little emergency wheels that just let a driver limp to the nearest tyre shop.
The space saver spare tyre no doubt looks like an acceptable trade off to the motor car manufacturers. They get to boast about more space in the boot and the crumby little steel pseudo-wheel is a lot cheaper to make than a fifth alloy affair. And, generally speaking, the pseudo-wheel will do the job on the rare occasions that it is pressed into use.
Just so with camera makers. Fitting an optical viewfinder to a compact digital camera must add to the cost. The coupling of the zooming mechanism in the viewfinder with the camera zoom must take up valuable space, increasing the volume of the camera which runs counter to the obsession with miniaturisation. Clever engineers and product designers have long since stopped looking on compact digital cameras as photo taking devices. They are now fashion accessories. Who needs to be able to actually see what they are taking? The important thing is not to be taking but to be seen to be taking.
Anyway, Mr Varley goes on to say that he treated the advice he read here with contempt, bought a camera, went off to Cairns for a holiday and returned to report that “it was impossible to see the subject matter with a LCD screen in bright sunlight. My apologies!”
Apologies accepted. Very gracious of you. But the story does not end there.
The other day we were visiting friends and Bob has a Sony digicam with only LCD viewfinder. He finds that he can’t see anything in sunlight or when he is wearing his polarising sunglasses. He has tackled the problem in the dinky di Australian manner by cobbling together a viewing tube from black cardboard. He has made the tube with the same rectangular cross section as the LCD screen and cut it to the length at which his eye best focuses on the image -- a sort of dioptre adjustment by trial and error.
At the eye end of the screen he has plugged in a baffle with a small circular aperture to look through. The whole device is attached to the camera with a combination of Blu Tac and Velcro.
Looking into the matter further it turns out that other frustrated photographers have come up with various solutions to the invisible viewfinder, including the venerable black bag over the head. One has noted that some medium sized LCD screens are roughly the same dimensions as a 35mm slide and that means that a slide viewing loupe with the translucent screen removed will do the job nicely.
We have tried this arrangement and find that it works, but there are a couple of problems. First, adding the loupe adds considerably to the bulk of the camera which defeats the virtues of miniaturisation. And second, the lens in the loupe gives a magnified view of the screen making every pixel individually visible, a bit like using that other abomination, the electronic viewfinder.
It goes without saying that the best and simplest solution to the problem is just to say no when the salesman tries to sell you a camera without an optical viewfinder. That’s not so hard, is it?
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Posted by terry at February 13, 2006 02:57 PM
Worth Checking Out
Digital Cameras SydneyComments
Hello Terry,
My sentiments exactly and I would include the mobile phone cammeras. The main point I would make is when are the camera manufacture's going to listen to the customers?
Posted by: Barry at February 14, 2006 10:20 AM