Post by PeterW on Sept 9, 2011 9:33:51 GMT -5
Hi all,
You may remember that despite my earlier protestations about never buying a P&S digital camera without a viewfinder I was offered a little Pentax Optio, 7.1 megapixels, waterproof, dustproof and almost user-proof complete with battery charger and still in its box at a price I couldn’t resist.
At first I had a lot of difficulty holding the camera steady, away from my eye, to compose the picture on the screen and make an exposure free from camera shake. Success rate was low. Using a monopod when I was out in my buggy improved the success rate but I still wondered if I’d made a mistake about not having a viewfinder.
I borrowed a couple of P&S digitals that had viewfinders, mounted them on a tripod and compared what I saw on the screen with what I saw in the viewfinder. At best I can describe the view in the viewfinder as an approximation of what was on the screen. Not only was there so much parallax error because the finder was above and to one side of the lens, but the area covered in the viewfinder was considerably more than the area on the screen.
I didn’t mind this so much because I usually crop pictures anyway. But I got to thinking that if I “pretended” I had a viewfinder – just a simple frame finder with no backsight – on top of the camera I could hold it steady up to my eye while I took the picture.
I made one up from some copper wire held on the top of the camera with Blu-Tack. It worked, more or less, but I couldn’t make any allowance other than guessing for the zooming in or out of the lens.
So I took the frame finder off and, having looked the picture on the screen, I just held the camera up to my eye, where I could brace my left elbow to hold it steady, looked at the subject over the top of the camera and brought the main subject matter into the middle of my eye-view.
After some practice I got quite good at this viewfinder-less eye-level composition. The pictures needed cropping, but I got what I wanted. When I was out taking pictures in a market I got a few odd looks sometimes from people with P&S digitals who held their cameras at arm’s length and shot what they saw on the screen. But I’ll bet I got a higher percentage of sharp pictures free from camera shake than they did.
The weather here today is rotten, heavy overcast with dull uninteresting lighting, and threatening to rain. I think I’ll stay indoors today, but if tomorrow is brighter I may stir myself to get out and about and take some pictures to post here.
PeterW
You may remember that despite my earlier protestations about never buying a P&S digital camera without a viewfinder I was offered a little Pentax Optio, 7.1 megapixels, waterproof, dustproof and almost user-proof complete with battery charger and still in its box at a price I couldn’t resist.
At first I had a lot of difficulty holding the camera steady, away from my eye, to compose the picture on the screen and make an exposure free from camera shake. Success rate was low. Using a monopod when I was out in my buggy improved the success rate but I still wondered if I’d made a mistake about not having a viewfinder.
I borrowed a couple of P&S digitals that had viewfinders, mounted them on a tripod and compared what I saw on the screen with what I saw in the viewfinder. At best I can describe the view in the viewfinder as an approximation of what was on the screen. Not only was there so much parallax error because the finder was above and to one side of the lens, but the area covered in the viewfinder was considerably more than the area on the screen.
I didn’t mind this so much because I usually crop pictures anyway. But I got to thinking that if I “pretended” I had a viewfinder – just a simple frame finder with no backsight – on top of the camera I could hold it steady up to my eye while I took the picture.
I made one up from some copper wire held on the top of the camera with Blu-Tack. It worked, more or less, but I couldn’t make any allowance other than guessing for the zooming in or out of the lens.
So I took the frame finder off and, having looked the picture on the screen, I just held the camera up to my eye, where I could brace my left elbow to hold it steady, looked at the subject over the top of the camera and brought the main subject matter into the middle of my eye-view.
After some practice I got quite good at this viewfinder-less eye-level composition. The pictures needed cropping, but I got what I wanted. When I was out taking pictures in a market I got a few odd looks sometimes from people with P&S digitals who held their cameras at arm’s length and shot what they saw on the screen. But I’ll bet I got a higher percentage of sharp pictures free from camera shake than they did.
The weather here today is rotten, heavy overcast with dull uninteresting lighting, and threatening to rain. I think I’ll stay indoors today, but if tomorrow is brighter I may stir myself to get out and about and take some pictures to post here.
PeterW
