Shock of the old

[tom b]

I got a phone call from thirty-something year old Renee, one our designers this morning. She had borrowed a camera from us and was taking some photos of a room on the other side of the city.

She thought the camera wasn't working. She had turned the camera on and no image was appearing on the LCD screen.

It took me a while to realise what was happening.

You've got to look through the viewfinder was my reply. Take the photo and then look at the screen.

She's just walked back into the office. "I worked it out" was her reply.

Have you used a SLR before?

"No this was my first time".

I think my chances of getting a small 35mm digital camera with a viewfinder are fading fast!

Cheers,

[Rob C]

How to choke on one's coffee!

Rob C

[Jeremy Roussak]

I must confess that I'm surprised you're surprised. That's exactly the reaction I get, irrespective of age, pretty much every time I hand my DSLR to someone so I can actually appear in a photo (normally, for what I regard as pretty good reasons, I stay behind the lens!),.

Jeremy

[brianrybolt]

I gave  my son on his 21st birthday my dad's beautiful old wristwatch which I had re-conditioned at considerable expense.  He loved the present and I felt great.  He phoned 2 days later and said the watch doesn't work.  I freaked and told him to send it back to me and I'de take it to where is was repaired.  

Fortunately I asked the question, "Did you wind it".  "No" was the reply.  It wasn't even considered. . .

Brian

[feppe]

An acquaintance of mine, let's call him Chuck, a typical Finnish name, lent a bunch of old Led Zeppelin and other vinyl records to his nephew who had just gotten to the age where he started appreciating rock. A few weeks later he visits him, and they start listening to the records, sharing their favorite tunes.

As the record ends, Chuck gets up and changes sides on the record. His nephew is looking at this, mouth agape. It didn't even occur to him there are two sides on the records, and realizes he just doubled the amount of music available on them

And this was ten years ago...

[michael]

My son is now 33. When he was about 10 I was given a refurbished old phone as a gift. It had a dial.

We plugged it in in the living room for occasional use, but more as a decoration. The next day he picked up the receiver to call a friend and stood there blankly. Eventually he asked, "Where are the buttons so I can "dial" the number"?

Michael

[Ken Bennett]

I know one young person who was thrilled when her new DSLR had something called "live view" -- now she can hold the camera out at arms length to shoot all her photos. Just like a "real" camera, she says.

[Rob C]

An acquaintance of mine, let's call him Chuck, a typical Finnish name, lent a bunch of old Led Zeppelin and other vinyl records to his nephew who had just gotten to the age where he started appreciating rock. A few weeks later he visits him, and they start listening to the records, sharing their favorite tunes.

As the record ends, Chuck gets up and changes sides on the record. His nephew is looking at this, mouth agape. It didn't even occur to him there are two sides on the records, and realizes he just doubled the amount of music available on them

And this was ten years ago...

As we are talking Led Zeppelin, are you sure the nephew was really as dumb as he seemed?

Rob C

[Ben Rubinstein]

My son is now 33. When he was about 10 I was given a refurbished old phone as a gift. It had a dial.

We plugged it in in the living room for occasional use, but more as a decoration. The next day he picked up the receiver to call a friend and stood there blankly. Eventually he asked, "Where are the buttons so I can "dial" the number"?

Michael

Being just 20 days away from my 30th birthday can I point out that all the phones in our house when I was that age were still rotary dial?   No doubt it being the industrialised North of England we were far from being as technologically advanced as over the other side of the pond...

[mahleu]

I have the same fun when someone drives my car. You have to manually switch on the fuel pump, the indicators (turn signals) and windscreen wipers don't auto cancel...

[JohnBrew]

I still keep an old manual phone in the closet for those times when we lose power here on the island. I was about to drop my land line when my wife brought up hurricanes and earthquakes, both of which we are subject to and either of which could knock out the cellphone towers, so we still have it.

[ziocan]

I must confess that I'm surprised you're surprised. That's exactly the reaction I get, irrespective of age, pretty much every time I hand my DSLR to someone so I can actually appear in a photo (normally, for what I regard as pretty good reasons, I stay behind the lens!),.

Jeremy

The same here.
90% of cameras in this world are not DSLR, so I would expect a non photographer to be a little "disoriented" handling one.

[Jeremy Roussak]

I have the same fun when someone drives my car. You have to manually switch on the fuel pump, the indicators (turn signals) and windscreen wipers don't auto cancel...

But at least your steering wheel is on the correct side of the car!

Jeremy

[tom b]

The same here.
90% of cameras in this world are not DSLR, so I would expect a non photographer to be a little "disoriented" handling one.

Renee is in her thirties. It has only been in the past half a dozen or so years that digicams have been around for most people. Prior to that everyone looked through some kind of viewfinder and clicked to take a photo.

I wrote "I think my chances of getting a small 35mm digital camera with a viewfinder are fading fast!"

As a person who wears glasses I find looking at LCD screens to be a less than pleasant experience. I find it disturbing that it has taken such little time for people to forget about using viewfinders.

Cheers,

[feppe]

As a person who wears glasses I find looking at LCD screens to be a less than pleasant experience.

As another glass-wearer that's a strange statement to hear. I find using viewfinders with glasses a major hassle - eye relief is never enough so I have to move my head around ever so slightly to get the full frame, or mash my face, eye and glasses against the viewfinder. I much prefer using the ground glass on my TLR over any SLR/dSLR viewfinder I've used.

Not saying LCDs don't have their own major problems - the main one for me being lack of stability when holding a camera at arm's length. But it's far from a clear case of viewfinders winning over LCDs.

[tom b]

As another glass-wearer that's a strange statement to hear. I find using viewfinders with glasses a major hassle - eye relief is never enough so I have to move my head around ever so slightly to get the full frame, or mash my face, eye and glasses against the viewfinder. I much prefer using the ground glass on my TLR over any SLR/dSLR viewfinder I've used.

Not saying LCDs don't have their own major problems - the main one for me being lack of stability when holding a camera at arm's length. But it's far from a clear case of viewfinders winning over LCDs.

I wear reading glasses. So if I am out walking and taking photos I have to stop and put on my glasses if I want to view a LCD. Then I have to take them off when I start walking again. It's a real pain.

With a DSLR, I adjust the viewfinder diopter control and I don't have to wear glasses with the camera.

I may have to put on my glasses if I review images but that isn't necessary most of the time.

I'm long sighted so most viewfinders are to be preferred over no viewfinder (ie LCD)

A digital camera with a viewfinder still has to have a LCD. You can still have live view. It's not either/or, you can have both.

A viewfinder can give you speed, aperture, ISO info etc at the time of taking the image so you can make adjustments depending on the figures.

By putting the camera to your eye it is more stable and more discrete that outstretched arms (at least in my experience).

The choice some kind of manual focusing plus autofocusing is better that just autofocusing.

These are advantages that shouldn't be lost. Let's have our cake and eat it too!

Cheers
 

[Robert Roaldi]

I wear reading glasses. So if I am out walking and taking photos I have to stop and put on my glasses if I want to view a LCD. Then I have to take them off when I start walking again. It's a real pain.

With a DSLR, I adjust the viewfinder diopter control and I don't have to wear glasses with the camera.

I may have to put on my glasses if I review images but that isn't necessary most of the time.

I'm long sighted so most viewfinders are to be preferred over no viewfinder (ie LCD)

A digital camera with a viewfinder still has to have a LCD. You can still have live view. It's not either/or, you can have both.

A viewfinder can give you speed, aperture, ISO info etc at the time of taking the image so you can make adjustments depending on the figures.

By putting the camera to your eye it is more stable and more discrete that outstretched arms (at least in my experience).

The choice some kind of manual focusing plus autofocusing is better that just autofocusing.

These are advantages that shouldn't be lost. Let's have our cake and eat it too!

Cheers

Ditto. Glad you made the distinction between full-time eyeglass wearers and those who need reading glasses (like me). I'd be happy with one of those Oly MFT cameras, but without a viewfinder I would not buy one. I have had a couple of P&S digicams that had no viewfinder and in my case I have to hold them a couple of feet away to be able to see the LCD when I don't have my reading glasses with me. That's going to get worse with age. It's not good enough. In my case I get a LOT of non-horizontal horizons, which hardly ever happens when I use a viewfinder. I recently bought a new P&S, some small Canon thing, because it has a viewfinder. I don't know what percentage of the scene it shows and don't care because I can compensate for that with practice, same way I did with almost every film SLR I ever owned.

I have a difficult time with the notion that viewfinders are being eliminated because of cost. I'd pay $50 extra for a Oly EP-n that had a viewfinder. Hell, even $100 extra. Compared to the cost of the camera, lenses, software, computers, that amount is forgettable. And I'm not stuck in the past either, the viewfinder can be an EVF, doesn't have to be optical. An optical viewfinder matters in sports coverage, obviously, but given the fact that everyone wants live view on their LCDs, an EVF should be fine. (I own a Sony R1 and it works fine in that old camera. If it would help reduce cost, if that's important, I'd even be happy with a B&W EVF. I can look at the real scene if I want to see the colours, who cares how colour-accurate the camera's screen is, I just want the viewfinder so I can frame properly.

[DaveLon]

Ditto. Glad you made the distinction between full-time eyeglass wearers and those who need reading glasses (like me). I'd be happy with one of those Oly MFT cameras, but without a viewfinder I would not buy one. I have had a couple of P&S digicams that had no viewfinder and in my case I have to hold them a couple of feet away to be able to see the LCD when I don't have my reading glasses with me. That's going to get worse with age. It's not good enough. In my case I get a LOT of non-horizontal horizons, which hardly ever happens when I use a viewfinder. I recently bought a new P&S, some small Canon thing, because it has a viewfinder. I don't know what percentage of the scene it shows and don't care because I can compensate for that with practice, same way I did with almost every film SLR I ever owned.

I have a difficult time with the notion that viewfinders are being eliminated because of cost. I'd pay $50 extra for a Oly EP-n that had a viewfinder. Hell, even $100 extra. Compared to the cost of the camera, lenses, software, computers, that amount is forgettable. And I'm not stuck in the past either, the viewfinder can be an EVF, doesn't have to be optical. An optical viewfinder matters in sports coverage, obviously, but given the fact that everyone wants live view on their LCDs, an EVF should be fine. (I own a Sony R1 and it works fine in that old camera. If it would help reduce cost, if that's important, I'd even be happy with a B&W EVF. I can look at the real scene if I want to see the colours, who cares how colour-accurate the camera's screen is, I just want the viewfinder so I can frame properly.

I too use reading glasses and the LCD screen is, for me, useless as I need to put my glasses on to see it but then cannot see anything that is not at reading distance. I had a pair of sunglasses made with reading lens at the bottom and a neutral density layer at the top and it does allow me to use my G 10 but I still much prefer my viewfinder cameras. For me no viewfinder = no purchase.

Dave

[John R Smith]

This whole issue is typical of the present-day triumph of style over substance. Taking a photograph with the camera held out in front of you is inherently poor practice. It's fine to view the image on a screen if the camera is mounted on a tripod, of course, but for hand-held shooting it is just silly unless you are using a 'Blad or Rollei with a WLF, in which case the camera is braced back against your abdomen. The demise of the viewfinder on compact cameras is also very ageist and discriminatory, because for anyone over 50 the new compacts become pretty unusable as you will need to wear reading glasses to see the screen. I have exactly the same problem with them, and I would never consider buying one.

And another thing, while I'm feeling all grouchy and sidelined by the the world and its nonsensical lack of respect for the lessons of the past. I went to buy a monitor yesterday, and found to my horror that the only things on offer at PC World were all ridiculous wide-screen travesties which were like looking at the world through a letter-box slot (does no-one print portrait format anymore?). I had to rootle around through piles of boxes to find a sensible 19 inch 1280x1024 panel which the salesman didn't even know they had ("Oh no, we don't do those anymore, sir"). And they only had two. So soon, if you want a normal proportion monitor, you will probably have to get an Eizo or other incredibly expensive device.

John

[tom b]

And another thing, while I'm feeling all grouchy and sidelined by the the world and its nonsensical lack of respect for the lessons of the past. I went to buy a monitor yesterday, and found to my horror that the only things on offer at PC World were all ridiculous wide-screen travesties which were like looking at the world through a letter-box slot (does no-one print portrait format anymore?). I had to rootle around through piles of boxes to find a sensible 19 inch 1280x1024 panel which the salesman didn't even know they had ("Oh no, we don't do those anymore, sir"). And they only had two. So soon, if you want a normal proportion monitor, you will probably have to get an Eizo or other incredibly expensive device.

John

One of the programmers at work has two Dell widescreen monitors. One is used in landscape mode and the other is used in portrait mode.

I understand your problem though. I was a bit grumpy when I got a widescreen at work but I must admit that as I was doing a lot of layout in InDesign it was great for working on spreads.

Cheers,