07-01-2011, 04:54 PM
[quote name='Martin_MM' timestamp='1309525562' post='9704']
[Electronic viewfinder] EVFs...to fully match the quality of [optical viewfinder] OVFs - may easily require another 10 years of hard development work
[/quote]
100% agree that it will be years before an EVF's image quality matches an optical viewfinder's. Similarly agree with the common feeling that it is usually more pleasant and fun for the photographer to look through an optical viewfinder at a scene, than it is to look at the scene via an electronic viewfinder. Optical viewfinder image quality is superior except when it's not too dark. Which unfortunately happens both at night, and during many kinds of flash setups where there are not great preview lamps.
The quite literal beauty of the optical viewfinder's performance is due to its fantastic assistance from the human eye and brain. The eye-brain system is operating with an extremely familiar type of image, to always see a reasonable scene. (Were infants affixed with an electronic viewfinder at birth that they used continuously through their formative first 3 years of life the eye-brain system would not find an OVF so comfortable.) The eye-brain system brightens a dark scene, dulls a bright one, almost always corrects the color balance to something reasonable, always look sharp even when the subject is moving (thanks to IBIS in-brain-image-stabilization), always shows detail in extreme highlight and shadow areas via rapid scene scanning and unconscious image gain adjustments, etc etc.
So if the priority of a photographer is to enjoy their in-field visual experience of looking through a camera, an optical viewfinder is going to be superior. Superior for years to come, as Martin MM suggests. And I don't mean to dismiss such a priority as misguided. A happy and enthusiastic photographer is nearly certain to be better photographer than one who is continuously understimulated by a poor electronic viewfinder experience. And most good photographs require a photographer in a good, alert (probably enthusiastic) state of mind, as well as great equipment.
In fact, for photographs taken with something between a mild wide angle and mild telephoto (perhaps most photos), where parallax mismatch is not a problem, one can make a case for a wireframe viewfinder as sort of the ultimate OVF. The view through a wire frame is much more natural(hey it can even be 3D), familiar, and full of just-outside-of-the-scene cues than an OVF will ever be. Yet the dominance of an OVF over wireframe also speaks to the inevitable dominance of electronic viewfinders, perhaps sooner rather than later for many image-quality-demanding people.
Most of us don't think of using a wireframe viewfinder, even if there are no parallax and magnification problems with it. And even though the view through and around a simple wire frame is so much richer than squinting through the tiny box of an optical viewfinder. We don't take a wireframe viewfinder seriously, because that nice viewing experience is just so much farther removed from the 2-dimensional photograph we are heading towards, than the properly cropped, environmentally-isolated view we have through an optical viewfinder.
It's just too much work for the camera operator to imagine how a wireframed scene will translate to an isolated, cropped photograph, no matter how effortless and pleasant the wireframe may be to look through, in comparison to a wireframe's benefits.
And am similarly claiming that it's already, in 2011, just too much work for many a camera operator to imagine how an optical viewfinder scene will translate to a increasingly-probably-viewed-on-the-web, transistorized electronic image, in comparison to an optical viewfinder's benefits.
My Sony Nex's EVF electronic viewfinder gives me continuous, no-delay verification of the camera's knowledge of a scene's general white balance. It gives me continuous, no-delay verification of what highlights are likely blank or shadows are likely empty. I.e. the whole concept of "metering" a scene is pretty much gone. There is absolutely no chance of having a way wrong exposure if I'm paying attention to the live view. I.e. if I can see everything I want to in the viewfinder there's no chance that those details are going to be washed out or dropped out in the raw file. Particularly if I took the time when first setting up the camera to permanently adjust the camera's contrast and LCD brightness settings to correlate with what the raw files can typically preserve.
When I take a photo, the Nex EVF even gives me a fleeting glimpse of what just got captured, including a hint of subject blur in the final image. And I'm not forced to use an unnecessarily bulky, fragile, expensive, and failure-prone camera body that houses a fixed or flipping mirror.
I don't enjoy looking through an optical viewfinder as much as using a wireframe finder on my twin lens reflex equipment. And I don't enjoy my Nex EVF as much as looking through my optical viewfinder equipment. But in compensation I do enjoy, in the field on professional gigs, smaller, more reliable (for a given expense) equipment, and an EVF's near-zero anxiety about unwittingly screwing up exposure, white balance, and too-slow shutter speeds.
In looking over the pros and cons, it is true that the statistically average photographer is going to favor having a fun picture-taking experience over making it easier to have a higher percentage of perfectly exposed, color-balanced photos. Thus perhaps an optical viewfinder is always going to be nicer than an electronic viewfinder for most people, for years to come. Maybe it's only time-pressured, human-error-capable professionals, with a priority for reliably well-metered images, who will latch onto electronic viewfinder's predictive accuracy--long before the sheer electronic viewfinder image quality catches up to the IQ of an optical finder.
[Electronic viewfinder] EVFs...to fully match the quality of [optical viewfinder] OVFs - may easily require another 10 years of hard development work
[/quote]
100% agree that it will be years before an EVF's image quality matches an optical viewfinder's. Similarly agree with the common feeling that it is usually more pleasant and fun for the photographer to look through an optical viewfinder at a scene, than it is to look at the scene via an electronic viewfinder. Optical viewfinder image quality is superior except when it's not too dark. Which unfortunately happens both at night, and during many kinds of flash setups where there are not great preview lamps.
The quite literal beauty of the optical viewfinder's performance is due to its fantastic assistance from the human eye and brain. The eye-brain system is operating with an extremely familiar type of image, to always see a reasonable scene. (Were infants affixed with an electronic viewfinder at birth that they used continuously through their formative first 3 years of life the eye-brain system would not find an OVF so comfortable.) The eye-brain system brightens a dark scene, dulls a bright one, almost always corrects the color balance to something reasonable, always look sharp even when the subject is moving (thanks to IBIS in-brain-image-stabilization), always shows detail in extreme highlight and shadow areas via rapid scene scanning and unconscious image gain adjustments, etc etc.
So if the priority of a photographer is to enjoy their in-field visual experience of looking through a camera, an optical viewfinder is going to be superior. Superior for years to come, as Martin MM suggests. And I don't mean to dismiss such a priority as misguided. A happy and enthusiastic photographer is nearly certain to be better photographer than one who is continuously understimulated by a poor electronic viewfinder experience. And most good photographs require a photographer in a good, alert (probably enthusiastic) state of mind, as well as great equipment.
In fact, for photographs taken with something between a mild wide angle and mild telephoto (perhaps most photos), where parallax mismatch is not a problem, one can make a case for a wireframe viewfinder as sort of the ultimate OVF. The view through a wire frame is much more natural(hey it can even be 3D), familiar, and full of just-outside-of-the-scene cues than an OVF will ever be. Yet the dominance of an OVF over wireframe also speaks to the inevitable dominance of electronic viewfinders, perhaps sooner rather than later for many image-quality-demanding people.
Most of us don't think of using a wireframe viewfinder, even if there are no parallax and magnification problems with it. And even though the view through and around a simple wire frame is so much richer than squinting through the tiny box of an optical viewfinder. We don't take a wireframe viewfinder seriously, because that nice viewing experience is just so much farther removed from the 2-dimensional photograph we are heading towards, than the properly cropped, environmentally-isolated view we have through an optical viewfinder.
It's just too much work for the camera operator to imagine how a wireframed scene will translate to an isolated, cropped photograph, no matter how effortless and pleasant the wireframe may be to look through, in comparison to a wireframe's benefits.
And am similarly claiming that it's already, in 2011, just too much work for many a camera operator to imagine how an optical viewfinder scene will translate to a increasingly-probably-viewed-on-the-web, transistorized electronic image, in comparison to an optical viewfinder's benefits.
My Sony Nex's EVF electronic viewfinder gives me continuous, no-delay verification of the camera's knowledge of a scene's general white balance. It gives me continuous, no-delay verification of what highlights are likely blank or shadows are likely empty. I.e. the whole concept of "metering" a scene is pretty much gone. There is absolutely no chance of having a way wrong exposure if I'm paying attention to the live view. I.e. if I can see everything I want to in the viewfinder there's no chance that those details are going to be washed out or dropped out in the raw file. Particularly if I took the time when first setting up the camera to permanently adjust the camera's contrast and LCD brightness settings to correlate with what the raw files can typically preserve.
When I take a photo, the Nex EVF even gives me a fleeting glimpse of what just got captured, including a hint of subject blur in the final image. And I'm not forced to use an unnecessarily bulky, fragile, expensive, and failure-prone camera body that houses a fixed or flipping mirror.
I don't enjoy looking through an optical viewfinder as much as using a wireframe finder on my twin lens reflex equipment. And I don't enjoy my Nex EVF as much as looking through my optical viewfinder equipment. But in compensation I do enjoy, in the field on professional gigs, smaller, more reliable (for a given expense) equipment, and an EVF's near-zero anxiety about unwittingly screwing up exposure, white balance, and too-slow shutter speeds.
In looking over the pros and cons, it is true that the statistically average photographer is going to favor having a fun picture-taking experience over making it easier to have a higher percentage of perfectly exposed, color-balanced photos. Thus perhaps an optical viewfinder is always going to be nicer than an electronic viewfinder for most people, for years to come. Maybe it's only time-pressured, human-error-capable professionals, with a priority for reliably well-metered images, who will latch onto electronic viewfinder's predictive accuracy--long before the sheer electronic viewfinder image quality catches up to the IQ of an optical finder.