Optical vs. EVF finders ?

[adias]

Personally, I hate EVFs. All the cameras I've tried had a blackout lag that, for my style of photography, is unacceptable. For that reason, I see no real advantage over an OVF, and a lot of drawbacks. While the EVFs have improved over the years, there is, to my eye, no reason they should experience such a drawback. I want to be able to immediately continue to view my subject, and if I want to "chimp", I'll do that as time allows, beyond my initial double check of exposure, etc. (All my readings, commercially, are made with a handheld meter, and shot on manual. So other than initially showing a client what I'm getting under a loupe or enlarging on the back, There's not a lot of chimping going on usually.)

If by blackout you mean the still you see after taking the shot... you can eliminate that on most cameras in the user settings. I can do that on my 2yo NEX-6. I agree that that fixed frame is unacceptable for eye level viewfinders.

[BJL]

I did wonder if the in viewfinder chimping would become tiresome if constant.
Hopefully, there's scope to quickly turn it on or off ?

In-EVF review is typically optional as far as I know.  For the Olympus OMD EM5, the options range from no review, to a very brief one (0.3s, 0.5s) up to extremely leisurely (over 10 seconds!)

[AlterEgo]

When it gets dark enough that a good EVF is too slow, I can't see anything through an OVF either. As in, just black.

we have then different experience...

[shadowblade]

we have then different experience...

I commonly shoot in conditions such as ISO 100, f/7.1, 15s-60s or longer, with lenses which sometimes only have a maximum aperture of f/4, or even f/5.6 in the case of long telezooms or teleconverters. With an EVF, I can increase the gain so that I can focus properly. With an OVF, I struggle to see anything but the bright spots of light, which may not necessarily be where I want to focus.

[LKaven]

I find the virtual-reality sickness component of the EVF to be fatiguing and (literally) nauseating.  And I don't know if it will ever be possible to fix that.

What does interest me a lot right now for the future is augmented reality viewfinders.  There have been some advances in optical overlay technology at a competitive price point.

[chez]

Its interesting reading about the different experiences with EVF. One thing to note is the quality of the EVF has dramatically improved in the last couple years so if your view of the EVF was based on a camera that is not current or on a lower valued model, I think you should check out the EVF of today's cameras...they've improved.

[Guillermo Luijk]

One common thing many OVF users/lovers make when comparing their OVF to EVF's, is expecting to find the same experience and features as they have now with their OVF, additionally ignoring the advantages an EVF can provide. That guarantess the 'not yet' verdict since no new technology is better in every aspect to the former; CD's are not better than records in every aspect, flat TV's are not better in everything than tube TV's. So looking for an EVF to match or outperform an OVF in everything means waiting endlessly.

EVF have (increasing) advantages and (decreasing) disadvantages over OVF's. It's a trade-off to decide whether the improvement provided compensates for the things you loose. But you'll always loose something for sure.

My personal experience is that just having eyeview realtime exposure and white balance previsualization (with all their known drawbacks) makes me forget about using OVF anymore.

Exposing with an OVF vs exposing with an EVF:


Regards

[Telecaster]

I find the virtual-reality sickness component of the EVF to be fatiguing and (literally) nauseating.  And I don't know if it will ever be possible to fix that.

One of my friends has this same problem. He also finds watching 3D cine/video, regardless of the tech used, to be an unpleasant experience. None of it bothers me in the least. I managed fine with early '90s (low-res & grainy) EVFs on video cams…today's finders are superior by many orders of magnitude.

Maybe having shot so much b&w film in my teens & 20s has helped condition my eye/brain system to be comfortable with disparity between the view through the finder and the final image. Or disparity between the finder view and "reality." ??

-Dave-

[LKaven]

Yeah, it messes with my vestibular system.  The delay when panning trips it off.

Of course, I like the minimum of interference with the picture-taking process.  As Slobodan says, too much interaction disrupts one's connection with the subject, the primary focus.  I don't even use AF most of the time for that reason, and for the reason that the optimal composition for a given subject /never in life/ coincides exactly with the placement of an autofocus point.

[Petrus]

optimal composition for a given subject /never in life/ coincides exactly with the placement of an autofocus point.

That is why we have cameras with 50% extra pixels for cropping…

Besides, I have never found it difficult to point a chosen AF spot to a desired place, lock focus (automatic with half pressed release button) and reframe slightly. Takes less than 0.5 sec. After all with normal focusing glass SLRs we had just ONE focusing spot in the middle...

[LKaven]

That is why we have cameras with 50% extra pixels for cropping...

For me there is this moment of the simultaneous realization of the subject and the moment as a whole.  For me personally, the picture is either all there, or it isn't there at all.  Setting aside slight trimming here and there, it is an exceedingly rare thing when the "right" picture /just happens to be/ a proper subset of another picture.

But as I say, I think there is promise in the new augmented reality concepts (e.g., Magic Leap). 

[torger]

As far as I understand OVF is not going away soon, and that's not about the viewfinder itself but the auto focus detection. I don't remember where I read it, but it was something about the auto focus sensor used in a OVF camera can know much more about where to go with the focus than phase detect on the image sensor, meaning that especially for telephoto lenses the SLR cameras have a big advantage still, ie considerable faster auto focus. And as far as I remember the source I read it's about physics, not about technology so that advantage is not going away soon.

[Telecaster]

My hope is that improved contrast-detect AF, both in terms of predictive accuracy and overall speed, will eventually obsolete the phase-detect variety. As someone who rarely uses continuous focus, I eventually found the PDAF tradeoff between speed & accuracy to be unacceptable. And if PDAF doesn't go away I'm okay with that too…so long as I don't have to use it. 

-Dave-

[armand]

X-T1 has a nice viewfinder but I can cope quite well with the older X-E1 also.
WYSIWYG and variable zoomed view for manual focus are a couple of big advantages. Also although I don't use it that much the real time DOF scale in the viewfinder can be helpful.

[David Anderson]

My hope is that improved contrast-detect AF, both in terms of predictive accuracy and overall speed, will eventually obsolete the phase-detect variety. As someone who rarely uses continuous focus, I eventually found the PDAF tradeoff between speed & accuracy to be unacceptable. And if PDAF doesn't go away I'm okay with that too…so long as I don't have to use it. 

I've found AF on my OVF cameras has been all over the shop in terms of accuracy over the years and the number of frames I throw for missed focus is quite high.
A lot of that might be down to me of course, but that said, I want a camera that doesn't need micro focus adjustment and knows when it's hit focus.
More accurate off centre focus points would be nice as well.

[JaapD]

Please be aware that with a Mirrorless camera you can still have a de-focussed image. You may have heard of spherical aberrations where the focus point shifts as a function of the lens aperture. Just like an SLR a Mirrorless camera focusses at its widest aperture, then closes the aperture for taking the actual image.

[torger]

As far as I understand OVF is not going away soon, and that's not about the viewfinder itself but the auto focus detection. I don't remember where I read it

I remember now:
http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2015/02/16/canon-interview-cp-plus-2015-autofocus-full-frame-mirrorless-5ds-video

The fundamental difference is that phase detect on image sensor cannot handle images hugely out of focus while a dedicated AF sensor can, which makes a significant performance difference in telephoto photography. That is some sort of mirror-solution for the high end action cameras is probably not going away anytime soon.

[hjulenissen]

CD's are not better than records in every aspect

In my opinion, they pretty much are, but that is probably besides the point.

Anyways, I think it would be interesting to have "obnoxious" HDR-style tone-mapping in an EVF. I mean something that clearly shows every bit of "detail" that the sensor is currently capturing. It might not look appetizing, but it should provide valuable hints about what can be done to the raw fil in development.

-h

[AFairley]

X-T1 has a nice viewfinder but I can cope quite well with the older X-E1 also.
WYSIWYG and variable zoomed view for manual focus are a couple of big advantages. Also although I don't use it that much the real time DOF scale in the viewfinder can be helpful.

Testing showed me that the DOF scale is my X-E2 is wildly inaccurate as to point of focus making it useless setting target DOF.  That's with both the 27mm and 18-55mm.

[Petrus]

Testing showed me that the DOF scale is my X-E2 is wildly inaccurate as to point of focus making it useless setting target DOF.  That's with both the 27mm and 18-55mm.

Fujifilm uses wildly non-standard circle of confusion figure for their DOF calculators, this is a known anomaly.