viewfinder vs lcd screen made in china

The benefits of the viewfinder and LCD screen are often compared with one another. Depending on whom you ask, you might hear remarkably different opinions on the usability of the two.

As discussed above, photography is all about precision. Viewfinders have been around long before LCD screens, and therefore many photographers find viewfinders more comfortable to work with.

Viewfinders offer much more precision when you are shooting, especially on a bright day. It allows you to focus on the small details. Viewfinders reduce image distortion and capture an accurate image. That’s why most DSLRs and high-end mirrorless cameras today still have viewfinders.

Running out of battery is a nightmare for photographers, especially if you don’t have any spares. That’s why viewfinders are considered optimal in these situations. Viewfinders use comparatively much less battery than LCD screens.

If you are shooting in an area where electricity is scarce, or don’t have access to a charger or backup batteries, the viewfinder will be a better choice for you.

Viewfinders are very convenient to use and provide smooth handling. When looking through the viewfinder, it’s easy to keep the camera steady. This makes the viewfinder an optimal choice when you need to zoom in or have a slightly heavier camera.

For many people, this extra effort of adjusting your eyeglasses is troublesome. However, some viewfinder cameras have a built-in diopter that can help make it easier to use with glasses.

Viewfinders can be much smaller compared to LCD screens. As a result, you may not be able to see everything you’re capturing in the viewfinder accurately. This drawback is very important for photographers who want to preview every single detail when taking a picture.

To see details on viewfinders, especially the electronic ones, you have to zoom in on the frame. However, this can lower the resolution of the preview. Luckily, if most of your shots consist of zoom shots, this may not bother you much.

What sets LCD screens apart from viewfinders is their ability to provide 100% image coverage to the photographer. In comparison, cameras with a viewfinder offer around 90-95% of the image, sometimes less.

What you see through the viewfinder doesn’t always end up in the final result. Small details can be crucial. That’s why this 5-10% difference in image coverage can be a significant reason why you might choose an LCD screen over the viewfinder.

When you are in a lower field-of-view, framing can be much more difficult. Many people can’t take a picture while lying on the ground using a viewfinder. This is where LCD screens come in. Flexible LCDs make it easier for you to capture images when you can’t reach awkward angles.

LCD screens produce great results for night photography. LCD screens are often used for night photography due to their bright image playback quality. They help you focus on the small details when you are shooting at night.

An evident shortcoming of the LCD screen is its lack of utility on a bright day. Because of the glare, many people cannot use their LCD screen at all on a sunny day. It’s hard to see anything on the LCD except the reflections.

Another drawback to using an LCD screen is its difficulty in handling it. Holding the camera while looking through the LCD screen is difficult and takes a lot of effort, especially when you are zooming and trying to be precise.

Another disadvantage of LCD screens is the fact that they can easily overexpose your image. This should not be a problem for seasoned photographers who can improve the quality of the image with better handling and precision.

Those were some of the benefits and drawbacks of using a viewfinder and LCD screen to consider. So, which one is best? The answer depends on your personal preferences and budget.

If you’re a traditional photographer, you’ll probably be more comfortable with the viewfinder. If you are a photographer who likes to focus on small details and image quality, you should opt for the LCD screen.

Depending on the image, there could be noticeable differences when viewing via viewfinder versus the LCD screen - the camera has default settings and image taken in natural daylight. The viewfinder is reasonably accurate as close to the image displayed on a computer. However the same image on LCD can be "off" in terms of whites having a slight tinge of yellow hue and also other slight shading differences.

Has anyone else noticed this as rather frustrating to have the differences. Also this means having to double check with the more accurate viewfinder to avoid unnecessary corrections.

Shooting with the rear LCD screen on your camera may be convenient, but you"re also peering through a filter of colors and shades that you may not have been aware are altering the way you perceive your shots.

There are several reasons why you might want to take photographs using the rear LCD screen on your digital camera. It could be to overlay information such as a spirit level, camera settings, or to utilize the rule of thirds grid in order to achieve better composition. Perhaps you wear glasses or have an issue with vision in which using the viewfinder may detrimentally impact your ability to compose or shoot. It might even be that you"re shooting with your camera at awkward angles, maybe holding the camera down low to the ground to capture a macro shot of a flower or perhaps overhead at a crowded concert, where a tilting or vari-angle screen can be articulated to help with composition.

Camera brands use different LCD screens, so you and a friend could be taking a picture of the same scene and end up with wildly different-looking results when doing an image review together. Even models within specific manufacturers use different screens, so the reliability and uniformity of each screen for things such as color can be over-emphasized.

With the advent of mirrorless cameras and the introduction of the electronic viewfinder (EVF), we now have digital cameras where we literally can"t avoid shooting and reviewing photographs through a screen. The benefits of using an EVF over the rear screen is that the screen is sheltered from reflections and extraneous light, which can affect the perception of photos when using the rear screen. However, these tiny little screens inside a small box in the camera still don"t produce an ideal picture of your photographs.

Whatever the reason, it"s important not to rely on the scene on your rear screen. An assumption that what you see is what you"ve taken is tempting but a little foolish. That"s because the screen has a limit to the light and shade it can display. It also has a color balance, which can affect the white balance or color profile you attribute to shots. This unintentional filtration can have a negative effect on how you capture images. Some cameras have the option to turn the brightness of their screen up and down, which also affects how images on the rear screen are seen (whether using live view or to display photos already taken) as well as altering color balance of the rear screen manually. One way to mitigate this is to turn on the histogram and use that.

Notwithstanding these options and difficulties in the limitation of the screen technology, where you view your photos also has a big impact on what you see. Looking at a screen at night, for example, you might need to turn the brightness down to avoid blinding yourself. The vivid lower frequency colors of sunset or sunrise light may be cascading warm tones across and around the screen, forcing you to perceive the color temperature in the photograph differently. If you don"t believe me, have a look at color theory illusions online, and you"ll see just how easy it is for the eye to be tricked into perceiving things as the same, even though they"re different, or seeing the same colors or shades in a scene when in fact they"re completely different (remember the dress from 2015?).

That"s why I suggest you can maintain a healthy balance between relying on your rear screen for certain aspects of shooting such as composition, leveling, framing a scene, and getting a rough visual idea of how the photograph is coming together. But I would advise against relying on the screen to discern color, brightness of highlights and shadows, and other such optical aspects. For this, I would recommend the use of the histogram in camera, especially when needing to check if highlights or shadows have been over/underexposed and have become clipped. Your camera may also have a dedicated function to alert you to this. This and combining the approach with color swatches and gray cards can be a very good way to attain accurate color and exposure values in photographs.

It"s good practice to take stills in raw format, where the color and exposure is much more flexibly editing in post-production image editing software and study images on a decent monitor screen that can display a wide color gamut with deep shadows and bright highlights to get the most accurate view of what your photographs actually look like.

Try to view them in a low-light room with minimal reflections. You might want to consider using a screen hood to remove unwanted reflections further from obscuring your view (think of viewing shots on the rear screen outside during the midday sun and how difficult it is to see what"s going on without putting your hand round to screen to shade it from the bright light). So, although the rear screen is incredibly useful, it"s important not to rely on the rear screen for color rendition and exposure accuracy and instead look for more reliable methods for balancing your digital photos.

If you"ve had a shoot ruined by the color or brightness bias of your rear screen or perhaps think that the rear screen is the better way to compose shots over the optical viewfinder or relying on a good photographic computer monitor, then I"d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Whether you"re shooting with a DSLR or a mirrorless camera, there are times when it"s easier to use the camera"s viewfinder rather than the LCD screen, and vice versa. For example, it"s usually easier to hold the camera steady when it"s held to your eye because it"s braced against your face. It"s also easier to follow a moving subject in a viewfinder than it is on a screen with the camera at arm"s length.

However, when you"re shooting landscape, still life, macro or architectural photography with the camera mounted on a tripod, the larger view provided by the LCD screen is extremely helpful. Similarly, when you want to shoot from above or below head height or at an angle, it"s very convenient to frame the image on a tilting or vari-angle screen instead of trying to use the viewfinder.

It"s also very helpful to use the LCD screen when you"re focusing manually because the Live View image can be zoomed in to 5x or 10x magnification. This provides a very detailed view of any part of the image, making critical focus adjustments much easier.

Bear in mind, however, that using your camera"s rear screen for extended periods will have an impact on battery life. Using Live View on a DSLR is also not recommended when you want to take fast bursts of shots, because it will usually reduce the continuous shooting speed. At the other extreme, if you"re shooting an exposure that lasts for multiple seconds or minutes, an optical viewfinder can cause a particular problem: stray light can enter the viewfinder and interfere with the exposure. To prevent this, use the eyepiece cover provided on your DSLR"s strap.

EOS cameras with an EVF have a proximity sensor that will automatically switch from the rear screen to the viewfinder when you raise the camera to your eye (although you can optionally disable this).

You know how people have been raving about the 2.4-million dot viewfinder Sony squeezed into the NEX 7 camera111? A tiny optical viewfinder that manages to pack in almost three times more dots than found in the highest-end camera viewing screens?

Well, that "finder is now officially lame, a crappy 8-bit-style pixelated mess in the face of a magnificent new screen from French company MicroOLED, which sports a staggering 5 million dots (remember, though, dots doesn"t equal pixels. For a regular RGB display, divide by three).

The MicroOLED "finder is aimed at high-end cameras and video cameras, and may also come with RGBW (RGB plus white) pixels for a 100,000:1 contrast ratio (ten times Sony"s). This new chip is clearly a "retina" display for close-up viewing, and could make the optical viewfinder obsolete.

Think about it: with such high resolution, optical viewfinders lose their one advantage. Now you can ditch extra lenses and/or mirrors, you can zoom, overlay info on the screen and still manually focus as easily as with optical. Bonus: the optical "finders in even high-end compacts like the Canon G-series suck to the point of uselessness. They will be needed no more.

LCD screens are great, and the quality improves with each new generation of DSLR cameras appearing on the market. But, many professional photographers prefer to use a camera"s viewfinder. We explain the benefits and disadvantages of each.

LCD screens have advantages, but so do optical viewfinders. When it"s time to frame a photo with your DSLR camera, you need to decide which side of the viewfinder vs. LCD debate you lean. Unlike the optical viewfinder, the LCD screen displays the entire frame that the sensors capture. Optical viewfinders, even on a professional level DSLR, only show 90-95% of the image. You lose a small percentage on the edges of the image.

Digital SLRs aren"t light, and it"s easier to produce a crisp, sharp image when you hold the camera up to your eye to use the viewfinder. That way, you can support and steady the camera and lens with your hands. But, viewfinders are generally smaller than LCD screens. Viewfinders are also less convenient to use, especially if you wear glasses.

At the end of the day, though, as intelligent as digital cameras are, the human eye can resolve more detail than an LCD screen. You get a sharper and more accurate view of your image by using the viewfinder.

The biggest drawback with LCD screens is probably shooting in sunlight. Depending on the quality of the screen, you may not be able to use it in bright sunshine because of the glare. All you see are reflections off the screen. Also, the crystals contained within LCD screens tend to flare in bright sunlight, making the situation worse.

Holding the camera at arm"s-length while looking at the LCD screen—and then keeping the camera steady while zooming in on a subject—takes effort. When you use the LCD screen this way, you often end up with a blurry image.

No matter how good an LCD screen is, it"s unlikely to give an accurate overview of the image you took. Most overexpose an image by as much as one full stop. It"s best to acquire the technical knowledge about photography, rather than rely on the LCD screen to determine image quality. With this technical knowledge, you"ll have the confidence your settings are correct, and your images are properly exposed. So, in most cases, it"s best to use the viewfinder. But, if you like the convenience of an LCD, or you wear glasses, use the LCD. It"s mostly a matter of personal preference.

You can get great movies from a DSLR, but you"re stuck with staring at the rear LCD-panel whilst shooting. With the internal mirror flipped up to let the light get to the sensor, the viewfinder is blacked-out. Enter Redrock Micro"s microEVF, an external electronic viewfinder for SLRs. Or rather "HDSLRs" as they are called in the press release, continuing the slow addition of useless letters onto the start of the SLR name.

The microEVF plugs into the HDMI port of any camera that has one and uses the signal to drive its LED-backlit LCD screen. The eyepiece has a 1.2-million dot resolution, which is higher than the 920,000-dots found on most high-end rear-panels. The 6-ounce unit has its own battery which promises a full day of use, and there will also be some mysterious "Electronic assist features that will be announced closer to production release." These will either be self-contained additions, or will rely on information reaching the eyepiece via the HDMI-cable.

The microEVF is probably essential for anyone shooting outdoors in the sunshine, and - because it can be positioned off-camera - it"s a lot more practical than the loupe-type hoods that just fit over the camera LCD. A release date has yet to be decided, but the price will be $595.

The Zacuto Sony FX6 Z-Finder is specifically designed to suit the shape and size of the monitor included with the Sony FX6. It is the same optical viewfinder eyepiece but the mount is different for the FX6. The FX6 Z-Finder comes with a flip up frame designed to slide onto the FX6 LCD and lock securely in place. The Zacuto Z-Finder will pop on and off the frame for quick shooting. The red lever at the bottom of the frame allows you to quickly flip the Z-Finder up without removing it from the frame. If a producer/client/director etc. wants to see into the viewfinder, you can flip it open instead of having to adjust so they can get their eye to the loupe.

This Z-finder will magnify the LCD screen by 2.5x and has a diopter for specific focus tuning. It cuts out any extraneous light and offers an initial point of stability by pressing your eye against our comfy, large eyecup. The FX6 Z-finder comes with a 40mm diameter Zacuto optical designed lens, anti-fog coated protective covers, and the mounting system designed specifically for the FX6 LCD. The diopter allows you to dial in the focus to match your eye. If you need extra focal points you can use the included Z-Finder Extender Frames. These are semi-permanent stackable frames that attach to the body of the Z-Finder and extend the Z-Finder glass further away from the LCD screen for people who are farsighted. The diopter range with the included lens and extender frames is -4.0 to 0.0.

If you need more adjustment than the Extender Frames provide, you can add drop in diopters for further diopter adjustment. The interchangeable anti-fog glass diopters, -1, +1, +2, +3 and +4, correct the focus to your vision for perfect clarity. An aluminum sun mask is built into the Z-Finder to protect your LCD screen from sunlight. Drop in diopters installed underneath this aluminum sun mask.

The included FX6 Mounting Bracket mounts the Z-Finder using the Sony 15mm rod mount.  This includes a locking lever which screws into the flip frame to hold the LCD securely in place. The Mounting Bracket attaches to either the Sony adapter or any 15mm rod. This setup is NOT ideal for shoulder mounted; it will not get the eyepiece where you need it. We suggest the FX6 Z-Finder Shoulder Mounting Kit.If you already own a Zacuto Z-Finder, you can buy just the mounthere.

WARNING: The Z-finder is a magnifier and as such will magnify the sun which can damage the LCD screen if the sun is allowed to shine directly through the Z-finder lens. Use the enclosed lens cap to block light from entering your Z-finder when not in use.

- On the back of the T5i and T4i is a large LCD monitor. This bright LCD monitor is really useful, because you could view it from just about any angle from behind the camera. It also could speed up working with your camera, since it"s a giant touchscreen. Many of the items that you used to have to use buttons and dials for can be accessed with a simple press. The LCD monitor serves five real purposes. You can review images on the LCD monitor. You could do this immediately after you take a photo, or you can use the camera"s playback controls to browse through the photos on your memory cards. You can use the LCD monitor as a live view display as you"re shooting. This is an alternative to looking through the viewfinder. Many photographers find it useful. Additionally, when you"re shooting video, the LCD monitor is really the only way to see your scene. That"s because the camera"s mirror is in the locked Up position when shooting video. So the viewfinder isn"t an option. You can also use the LCD monitor to view your camera"s menu options and make changes to the camera. To change settings for many of the items shown in the information display, press the quick control button. You can then highlight items and press Set to view options for the highlighted item. You can also often just tap the screen and choose from the available options. Lastly, you can use the LCD monitor to see the shooting function settings. This gives you information about how the camera is configured. We"ll explore these options more throughout this course. For now, let"s just identify some of the major icons in the shooting functions view and talk briefly about them. The shooting mode indicator lets you know if you"re shooting in a mode like manual or aperture priority. This next set of numbers is the shutter speed. Next is the aperture indicator for your lens. A D+ icon means that the highlight tone priority is enabled, which protects the brightest highlights. Next is the sensitivity of the camera. It is indicated by its ISO setting. The exposure level indicator works the same way as it did in the viewfinder. Next is flash compensation value, which indicates if you"ve increased or decreased the intensity of your off-camera flash. The next row contains a lot of information. You could check which picture style"s applied to the files, as well as what preset is being used for white balance. Speaking of white balance, the next two indicators show you if you"ve corrected the white balance or are shooting a bracketed set for options. In the next row, some of the important icons include auto focus operation, which will show how the camera is currently focusing. I also check the drive mode indicator to determine if I"m shooting in a burst mode or with a timer. The metering mode shows which method your camera is using to evaluate exposure. Be sure to check the image record quality, as well, to know if you"re shooting a RAW file, a JPEG file, or a RAW plus JPEG. The bottom row has a lot of information, too. I tend to look at the following as being most useful. The battery check lets you know how much power you have left. I also like to see the maximum burst indicator to know how many shots I can capture before the camera"s buffer is full. The last number will also show me how many images can fit on my memory card. To change settings for many of the items that you see here is quite simple. Just press the quick control button. You could then highlight the items using the multi-controller and press the set button in order to edit it. This is a great way to quickly change many of the important settings on your camera without having to go digging in menus or hunting for a specific button. A few more items related to touch controls. You might want to make those a bit quieter. If you press the menu key and you choose the first record tab, you can actually turn the sound off, so that every single touch of the screen doesn"t lead to a beep. That can be pretty annoying to the people around you. While you"re in the menus, you may also want to visit the third setup tab. Here, you"ll see the touch control item. Now, don"t use any sharp objects on the screen, or you could damage it. Same goes true with wet fingers. So don"t touch the screen with a wet hand or if it"s raining. If it is raining, or you get water on the screen, power it down, get someplace safe, and gently dry it off. You"re not going to want to put any protective sheets over that screen, as well, because it could become unresponsive.

I think that one of the best features of the Leica Q2 Monochrom is the EVF. Unlike the Leica M10 Monochrom, the EVF gives you the ability to preview an image before you press the shutter button. This is really helpful at times when you are not sure if an image would work in black and white. This not only helps with composition but with the exposure settings as well as the EVF gives you a representation of the overall exposure and you can quickly check your highlights and shadows and make sure you are happy with the exposure settings. From my brief amount of time with the Leica Q2 Monochrom sensor, protecting your highlights seems to be extremely important. You have almost no ability to recover overexposed areas of an image so you need to make sure you get your exposure correct. With a Leica M10 Monochrom, you would either have to use the backscreen and check the exposure before you click the shutter button or you would have to chimp afterward.

With these monochrome sensors from Leica, it is far better to underexpose an image than it is to blow the highlights and the Leica Q2M EVF means I can shoot the camera in aperture priority and use exposure compensation to control the exposure and protect my highlights as I am getting realtime feedback in the EVF. This is fantastic. It is exactly why I started to use EVF cameras at work as well. The electronic viewfinders are fantastic with helping you see an image before you take it but not all EVF’s are created equal. My first EVF experience was with the original Fujifilm X100 and it was ok in the day but unusable at night. I avoid all mirrorless cameras for years because of how bad the EVF was in the original Fujifilm X100. It took the Fujifilm XT1 to change my mind on EVF’s but I still had my doubts about them when shooting in low-light environments.

I forgot to talk about the sensor that switches between the EVF and the LCD screen. This is really good with the Leica Q2 Monochrom and switches between the two very quickly. I have never had to wait for the camera to catch up with me. When the Leica Q2 Monochrom EVF is raised up to my eye, the EVF is one and the camera is ready to shoot. This is significantly better than any mirrorless camera I have used before. I would say that this switching between the EVF and the LCD screen is way faster than the Nikon Z6. The second issue that I have found with the EVF is something strange and I have never seen this on any camera before. If you are displaying the histogram in the EVF, there is a reflection of the histogram in the opposite corner of the EVF. This would not be an issue the EVF was in color but when shooting a monochrome image, having a white histogram reflecting in the EVF is very distracting. I have never seen this type of reflection before but I guess it might be caused by the glass plate that protects the EVF screen. Maybe an eyecup for the Leica Q2 Monochrom would help with this I am not sure if one even exists right now and I doubt I would order one as I don’t particularly like using a camera with an eyecup on it. I am still testing the battery issue with the boosted EVF setting but it will be a few days before I would be able to update this blog again.

The VFL912HD is a multi-format LCD color viewfinder reducing in thickness, weight and power consumption, achieving the use in various locations. It employs 9-inch WXGA wide aspect liquid crystal panel, achieving the functions required as a viewfinder by using the same functions and operations of our HTM/TM series CRT monitors and HLM/VFL LCD monitor and VF.

4:3 (16:9 mode), 13:9, 14:9, 15:9, 16:9 (4:3 mode), 1.85:1 (16:9 mode) and 2.35:1 (16:9 mode) line markers can be displayed. The monitor can also display a 1%-step wise safety marker between the range of 80 and 99% with respect to the line marker area. A safety marker over the effective screen area can also be set in 1% increment in the range between 80 and 99%. For location framing and alignment, useful markers like 5-grid and 10-grid cross hatch markers are also available.