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Ever give much thought to what live preview would do for digital SLR's? It's not like it would take a fundamental change in technology - after all these cameras are capable of shooting at several frames a second - even if that didn't speed up - a live preview that updated three times a second would be useful in many situations. Here's a few of the things it would bring.
1) Histograms would happen before taking the picture - what a concept - the point and shoot's have this now - in fact it would open a whole new way of metering - you could specify ahead of time that you want to preserve highlights and the camera would show you the results of such plans before taking the picture - giving you the chance to either sacrifice some specular highlights or even to take more than one exposure to cover the whole dynamic range.
2) Accurate framing - no longer would less expensive cameras with only 90% viewfinders (a left over of the days when people shot slides and the slide mount trimmed about 10% so people were willing to live with this innacuracy) have no way to frame exactly - you'd used the lcd.
3) No more dark depth of field preview - you could see a bright well exposed image on the lcd at the actual f-stop.
4) Can you imagine what live preview would do for focussing? How about being able to put the focus check cursor on any part of the image desired and have a 100% magnification image appear on screen for either manual or auto focus or manual focus with auto confirmation. Wow! And with good depth of field preview, you could actually see if the f-stop is adequate.
5) Boy, would I like a tilting viewfinder on my dSLR.
There are lots of things I can think of adding to my 'dream' camera, but with one camera on the market already featuring live preview - it won't be long before many of them feature this.
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3 comments:
What a coincidence.... these are all features I looked for in a digital camera and found in the Sony F828. I can almost hear the laughter now..... it's a consumer model, yeah?... Not an SLR! It uses an EVF and they're rubbish aren't they? What about the chromatic aberration? Well those are all fair points of course; it is a consumer model, albeit made by a company with a fine track record in digital video (and that's what our cameras are effectively) and camera construction. I used Sony cameras as a news man so I was pretty well disposed towards them anyway. But this camera feels perfect in the hand, well balanced and ergonomically sound, so I continue to use it.
It's ready to use straight away after power-up, autofocus is fast and predictable, manual focus has that handy 'jump-in' to x200% when you use it. Histogram is live and accurate (i've checked it) EVF is bright at F16......
Now if only the sensor was better (whoops!)
George, your idea of a 3 frames/sec. live preview on a DSLR is unfeasible, because in one hour that would amount to 10800 mechanical shuttter clicks. And DSLR shutter lifespans are rated at between 20K and 200K clicks.
Yes, Olympus/Panasonic developed workarounds (not shutter dependent), but they are sad compromises...
Marcin
This of course raises the whole issue of 'why have a shutter' when you can zero a sensor electronically - I suspect there won't be shutters in future SLR's.
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