A tiny and personal test of some EVF

Kerusker wrote:

JeremieB wrote:

Kerusker wrote:

Lessiter wrote:

The thing that I find most offputting with evf's is the whitebalance. Second thing is the lack of subtlety in the colour and contrast. It just looks ugly compared to what you see with your eyes.

EVF is about as ugly as the data which are captured by the digital sensor resp. digital camera and what is created from this data - the image - when compared to real nature.

That's almost a vibrant hate declaration against the very essence of photography

Not at all. It says nothing about the art of photography.

Lesiter's statement is: The EVF image is ugly compared to nature (which isn't an image).

Then everything except nature can be seen as ugly compared to nature.

If someone is looking at a high contrast scene (of nature) he/she usually scans the scene in bright and dark areas sequentially and the eye needs time to adapt to the resp. areas.

Of course he can look through an OVF of his camera and do the same. But it will be impossible for him to ban the scene an a medium which faithfully reveals the whole brightness variations on a planar image in one step.

I disagree. The "potential" maximum DRs of our eyes/brains/cameras/LCD screens is different, but that does not mean each and every scene needs maximum DR to be faithfully reproduced. Said differently, we don't need "infinite DR" all the time, thankfully.

OLED screens are very good on the darkness side, but the brightness side is usually much more limited. They would need OLED HDR with high maximum brightness (I suppose that's next step for EVFs, maybe already started I don't know). Of course problem of OVFs infinite DR is that you should not look at the Sun ...

I.e. the image will be ugly compared to nature.

There are ways to come close to nature of course. Using 3D imaging is a big leap f.ex..

Ok but ...

What is "real nature" ? ("oh no", I hear you guys).

I suppose you mean "nature (or, let's say, "things", because some take photos of architecture of objects etc) as perceived by our human's eyes and brains".

Honestly I don't care about real nature or 3D. I like photography. I like to get rectangular and flat images. When the result is not "ugly" (IF it happens :-D) it's because I spent a lot of time and efforts to make it so. It could be nice because it's "close to nature", or because of the opposite, I don't really care.

The interest (for those who like it of course) of an OVF is that what you see is almost the same scene as what you would see with your naked eyes, except that a little light was lost for AF system, it went through the lens, and of course it's cut to fit the (almost) same frame as what the sensor will get, the last 2 items being desirable (well, unless you prefer rangefinders of course).

What happens next, when you press the shutter, is the capture, and it's similar whatever the camera and tech. But with an EVF the "real" scene is banned and you only have access to what is captured by the sensor, with a predefined (and usually configurable) development. Maybe one day sensors and screens will have same characteristics as our eyes and brains, meanwhile there will always be a difference.

And there are colors.

Of course no camera records colors perfectly, not even talking about WB.

But if I look through my OVF, then at the result, I can think "ok, what happened to these reds ? Let's try something else".

Through EVF, I may not even realize there was any problem with the reds because "what I see on the screen is not really what I could get but who cares". Maybe I could have made a better capture, but I won't even try because I'm not aware of it.

But all this is theory, and my initial answer was humor of course, but I like this kind of discussions so sorry about this What I really think ultimately is that it's possible to do wonders whatever the tech and gear, but enjoyment in doing so is our own. If you prefer EVFs you don't have to justify yourself - I don't either if I prefer OVFs.