A tiny and personal test of some EVF

Roland Karlsson wrote:

One of my main reasons for staying with Pentax is the OVF. In particular now when Pentax is the only one having OVF.

Some years ago I made a small and unscientific review of the best system camera's EVF. I visited a photo fair in Stockholm and looked at all cameras I could get my hands on. And .... the verdict then was .... cr@p. All EVF had lags and looked horrible. Yeah, could be used to frame the image, but not much more. None of those cameras I found interesting.

So, according to myth and urban legend, they are much better now, nearly as the real thing (OVF). So, today I had the possibility to redo my old review at "Fotomässan" in Stockholm. I looked at some length at the following cameras

• Sony A7R V
• Nikon Z7 II
• Nikon Z6 II
• Canon R5
• Canon R6
• Panasonic S? (I am not sure which one it was - it was FF)
• OM-1

Here comes my verdict. Note, that it is not all that easy. The behavior was not entirely predictable. Sometimes it was better and sometimes worse.

In my opinion only Nikon, Canon and Panasonic had EVF that were good enough for me. Sony and OM was not to me liking, although in one session I thought maybe Sony was OK. Other than that this is my ordering

1. Panasonic. I saw no problems. I checked several settings of the EVF and all were rock stable. It handled bright lights kind of good, with a strange smooth halo.
2. Nikon. The Z7 was totally without problems, like the Panasonic. Another handling of bright lights though, where they had a sharp halo destroying resolution of bright text. The Z6 was very bad, verry erratic image when turning around. And when I told that to the guy behind the counter he looked at it and confirmed it. He then did a general reset of the camera. And then it was OK, but not as good as Z7. Strange.
3. The Canon R6 was kind of good. I think it would have been OK for me to use. But, not the R5, but I did not make any investigations whether the guys could fix it. I do not remember how Canon handled bright lights.

So, how did this go? Quite good actually. Better than I thought. A bit annoying is the inconsistency. You think it is OK, and then you do not. Is that in my head - or in the camera? Sometimes it is absolutely in the camera, but probably not always.

I would still say that OVF rocks! But the Panasonic and the Z7 II are mighty good.

Kinda reminds me of my slightly related experience on Sunday morning.

My son was playing cricket for his club team and it was my turn as a parent to do the scoring. At the ground that they were playing, the scorers sit a fair distance from edge of the field, so whenever a catch was taken we have to identify which player took the catch (to enter it into the score book). When the other team was in the field and took a catch the other team's scorer tried to use his smart phone camera to zoom in to the group of celebrating boys to work out which fielder took the catch... he struggled... But I have scored at that ground (our home ground) before, so I was prepared. After the other scorer gave up on the smart phones' EVF in exaspiration! I handed him my 8x42 hunting binoculars with which he (and I in our fielding innings) could instantly find the relevant player and work out who did what. You can always identify the fielder who caught the catch from all the high fives!

The natural superiority of optical over electronic view