R...10, I guess they would call it

[adan]

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"I just wonder why Nikon or Canon or Sony or whoever haven't come up with a FF EVF camera yet, if its such a great idea?"

 

"Strange that an EVF is OK for some cameras and not others. How is it OK for a small Olympus but not a FF 'SLR' ? The technology is here but it's just not good enough."

 

James, I think you're falling into the trap of looking at a snapshot of the world right now today and predicting the future, even the immediate future, based on that snapshot.

 

Kind of like the guy who fell off a 100-story building. Passing the 10th floor, he is asked how things are going. He says, "Just fine! - so far."

 

Three years ago, Olympus was building and selling 4/3rds SLRS and traditional small-chip P&Ss. If you'd asked them then how much competition they were getting from EVF cameras, they'd have said "None - so far." They had a live-view/EVF u4/3rds prototype that they'd been showing for a couple of years with no movement towards actual production.

 

Then Panasonic came out with the G1 (et seq.).......

 

Canon and Nikon have a certain "inertia" - they have 50 years experience with lever/prism/mirror SLR mechanisms, and it is always easier to stick with what you already know than throw it away and learn a new paradigm. (Ask a lot of film users )

 

But inertia just means they are no longer the technology leaders...they are now followers. And what they will eventually "follow" is, say, the Sony SLT A33/A55. Sony SLT-A55 Review: 1. Introduction: Digital Photography Review

 

The Sony SLTs may be the "Panny G1 moment" for Canon and Nikon. Starting from the bottom of the line up, as Stephan Daniel says - but just think of the "bottom of the line" as "the 100th floor."

 

Personally, I think EVFs aren't there yet, for the way I work (strictly manual focus).

 

But in the big world, the ratio of camera-users who really use MF vs. those who are perfectly happy with AF and have never used anything else is probably around 1:100,000 and shrinking.

 

(Minolta introduced AF Maxxum mount 27 years ago. The global median age is - 27)

_______________

 

An aside on "Full-frame." FF is a big deal for some of us, including me. But even among advanced cameras (SLRs, Leica M), the percentage of cameras sold that are FF is probably, what, 5% of the industry total? Out of all cameras sold, including P&S, probably 0.01 percent. (1:10,000). FF does indeed impose some extra issues regarding electronic viewing (my 5D2 shuts off live view after about 5 minutes due to heat buildup) - but for a mass-marketer going after the 10,000 and not the 1, those are irrelevant.

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[wildlightphoto]

You get used to it.

 

Tried it, doesn't work for me. Gotta have the auto diaphragm on my 280.

[colorflow]

You get used to it.

 

I couldn't be happier.

 

...

 

Yes, (when using aperture priority) just set the aperture setting on the body to max aperture of the lens if the lens is chipped or don't bother if it is not. Then focus, set aperture on lens, and shoot. In bright light one can even set aperture, focus, and shoot which is no different from M9.

[rosuna]

Strange that an EVF is OK for some cameras and not others. How is it OK for a small Olympus but not a FF 'SLR' ? The technology is here but it's just not good enough.

 

It is a question of size, and other factors. APS-C reflex cameras with penta-mirrors have poor viewfinders. That was the standard in the 1,000€ range. The EVF of the Panasonic G series is better in terms of size, and the same goes for Olympus and their clip-on electronic viewfinder. The Olympus E5 camera has a quite large optical viewfinder but the size of the prism is equally large, and the cost has to be high (the camera costs more than 1,500€). It is not a standard or reference for those 4/3 reflex cameras. The mirrorless Pen cameras have replaced the low end 4/3 reflex units. Olympus lacks a comparable offer to the E5 camera in the mirrorless territory. And we are talking of small-format reflex cameras...

 

The FF reflex cameras have much larger viewfinders, all of them based on glass prisms (Sony, Canon, Nikon), and the price range is above 2,000€. The public inclined to this type of cameras has a different standard in mind for a viewfinder, price and features. The viewfinder has to be large, and with very high resolution. That translates to a big image. The best EVF are at this moment something like 1,4 MP screens, so any EVF for a FF camera should be bigger in size and with the same spacial resolution (at least). Add to all that a good refresh rate and a very short lag, etc. Now comes the problem of a really fast contrast-based AF (with a full-time operating sensor), considering much larger lenses for AF operation of the contrast-based type, etc.

 

For MF cameras the whole problem would be even harder to solve, just because 1) the public, 2) the standards are different, more demanding.

 

The current EVFs seem to be OK for APS cameras in the 1,000 € range, but mirrorless FF cameras need something different.

[pico]

EVF cameras will presumably also use M lenses, potentially a problem for Leica unless they are properly positioned in the market. Anyway, the advantages of telephoto and wide-angle R lenses mean that demand for at least some of the R range has a significant potential for picking up.

 

Any lens not designed for EVF is a total pain in the but with live-view because you have to stop-down manually. You have to open up to focus, and stop down again to make the picture. Like I said, it's a decades step backwards.