Leica P&S cams-why no viewfinder?

[troyfreund]

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Has Leica ever given a good explanation for why their point-and-shoot cameras are never given an optical viewfinder? I'd love to consider one of their p+s cameras, but can't bring myself to buy a camera without a viewfinder. Why no viewfinders?

[mgcd]

Hey Troy! Well I asked myself this question many years back and swore that I never would get one until they put a viewfinder back into these things... Errr... I've had a C Lux-1 going on two years now, admittedly it was given to me so that's my initial excuse and I needed something very small... It's compact, I guess that's the main attraction, but I never got a satisfactory answer from Leica as to why there are no viewfinders. Then again, Panasonic designs these p+s cameras...

 

Cheers,

[earleygallery]

The new Dlux has an optional wide angle finder. As said, the designs are Panasonic and they have just followed the trend for digicams. To be fair the finders on the Canons and Olympus P&S cameras are pretty poor, like using one of those throwaway cameras.

[Bob Ross]

P&S camera designs are all Japanese and I read that the marketing people ran a survey that indicated the peep-site optical viewfinders were not wanted.

The survey sample was considered significant, because it was entirely made up of 14 year old Japanese school girls.......

Bob

[Tenor1]

An interesting point is the ability to boost the brightness of the LCD. So adding a poor quality viewfinder must rate pretty low. I've never found the boost to make any real difference if it is too bright outside.

 

Regards,

Carlos Marques

[earleygallery]

I would add the Digilux 1 had an optical finder which zoomed with the lens, but again its a pretty small/basic affair, nothing at all like an M finder.

 

Personally I much prefer a proper finder too, but I use a C lux and it seems quite natural using the lcd 'finder' - one just adapts to it.