A tiny and personal test of some EVF

Roland Karlsson wrote:

Must have been a nice opportunity to play with all these cameras!

• Panasonic S? (I am not sure which one it was - it was FF)

[...]

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.

I assume this was either the S1 or S1R, as the S5 has a significantly lower-specced EVF.

1. 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.

Strange indeed as these have the same EVF.

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.

As you have noticed, camera-settings play a big role, just like e.g. diopter-settings matters a lot on the OVF. So it's not just specs etc, but also setting up things properly to your liking. But I can imagine that in a store, you don't have much time for this.

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

EVFs have come a long way. And it is good to realize the S1 nearly 4-years old already. In my opinion the 1st really good EVF is that from 2015's Leica SL.

Personally, for normal focal lengths, my most favored viewfinder is still the combined viewfinder/rangefinder. But for specific applications I prefer a TTL-view. E.g. for UWA, I like to be able to magnify the view to check precise framing.