EVFs in Low Light

[Nick Rains]

I was interested to read about using the Panasonic G1 in low light situations (Michael in Miami). Does anyone have opinions about EVFs used in low light? I've heard that they are limited and noisy, much like a video camera or LiveView on a dSLR, making it hard to assess focus.

[John Camp]

I was interested to read about using the Panasonic G1 in low light situations (Michael in Miami). Does anyone have opinions about EVFs used in low light? I've heard that they are limited and noisy, much like a video camera or LiveView on a dSLR, making it hard to assess focus.

Other people may disagree, but I have a Panasonic G1 and I find it rather easier to assess focus in low light than with standard viewfinders. The way the G1 works, when you put it on manual focus, it will go to a magnified view so that focusing it is something like grain focusing in a darkroom. As it gets darker the camera also turns up the gain on the EVF so the finder is actually brighter than the ambient light. I will say that I'm not exactly a focus Nazi -- most of the time, the autofocus, both on the G1 and my other cameras, will be as good as I can do by eye. There's also quite a bit of DOF with the smaller chip, which helps with the AF.

JC

[JamesA]

I was interested to read about using the Panasonic G1 in low light situations (Michael in Miami). Does anyone have opinions about EVFs used in low light? I've heard that they are limited and noisy, much like a video camera or LiveView on a dSLR, making it hard to assess focus.

They do have a rough, grainy appearance in low light, but they also increase apparent illumination of the scene so that you can still see in cases where you couldn't with an optical viewfinder.