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[OM] Re: Oly beats Canon...(long)

Subject: [OM] Re: Oly beats Canon...(long)
From: "Carlos J. Santisteban Salinas" <cjss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 18:21:08 +0100
Hi all,

>As for his contention of the traditional definition of normal being the
>diagonal of the format, it is 43mm for a 35mm film frame. I have never
>seen one of those normal lenses.

Pent*x has one, 43/1.9 IIRC. And I also like the 40mm fl instead of 45 (had
several ;-)

>The viewfinder thing. I reread what he said and think I understand
>better what he was trying to say, that what you see is too small in a
>digital camera. However he states there is marketing dishonesty when it
>is nothing of the sort.
[snip]
>The outside may be cropped off, but the image itself has the correct
>magnification.

I agree -- viewfinder magnification (with the same FL) are of the same
order than those of film SLRs, but the FOV is narrower, thus the image is
smaller.

>Why not just do more magnification? There is only so much light in an
>image. If you take the center portion and expand it to fill the
>eyepiece it will be dim.

I can't comment about this, I don't know if a higher viewfinder
magnification would lead to a dimmer view -- or not. Or wether it would
have any other adverse effects.

>I suspect that the lower
>magnification in the 350D compared to the 300D has to do with
>brightening it up a bit. Those pentamirrors, ya know.

Again, not sure. Pentamirrors are said to give darker views, no matter the
camera (film, digital, full-frame, etc).

>You also have to
>step back and realize he is complaining about a camera designed for
>someone who will never use it for anything but autofocus.

My main concern about the 300D viewfinder is the 'focusing' screen, which
helps about *nothing* to focus, just composition :-( Obviously, these
screens are designed for AF... with the slow zoom lenses of today, like
f/3.5-5.6 and worse. They give, however, a surprisingly bright & grainless
image, but lacking the 'bite' to focus accurately -- add the lack of a
split-image/microprism or whatever help, and you'll get a problem.

BTW, Beattie screens are quite bright, but not easy to focus with some
lenses (e.g. 28/2). OTOH, the Oly 2-x screens are a *joy* to focus and
compose ;-)

>And eyeglass
>wearers can see the whole image. You don't hear that complaint much
>now.

That's true -- much easier for me to see the whole image on the 300D than
on an OM :-( Another SLR 'from the dark side' with an easy-to-see 100%
viewfinder is the Nik*n F3 -- this time with a rather low magnification.

Enjoy,

...

Carlos J. Santisteban

<cjss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<http://cjss.galeon.com>



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