[Fcsnt54]

Yep, those are all things I like about the EVF on my SLT and mirrorless gear - especially the manual focus benefit, which - although no different to Live View on a DSLR - is easier and more enjoyable with my eye to the viewfinder. Add to that DOF preview with no loss of brightness, and - for manual aperture lenses - actual DOF view. Plus, registration distance on most mirrorless bodies that provides access to an even wider range of legacy glass, if that's your thing (it's one of mine).



But, I'm less crazy about the digitised / unnatural view, difficulty in seeing the EVF view when I have strong sunlight behind me (really have to jam my eye into the viewfinder), and the tiny but noticeable lag (more of a problem on some cameras than others). Battery life isn't typically great, either, due to the constant "live view" whether you're using the EVF or main LCD screen.



Overall, I prefer looking through an OVF, and I find shooting with a DSLR more pleasurable. But, when the application calls for it, I'll happily go with mirrorless. Thankfully, I'm not one of those adversely affected when using an EVF, so they work pretty well for me.

I think the battery depends on camera and how the person sets it up. To the most part I don't have battery issues at all with my mirrorless cameras. For a general camera I'll get anywhere between 600-2000 shots on one battery. I don't spray my shots either.

[BigMackCam]

I think the battery depends on camera and how the person sets it up. To the most part I don't have battery issues at all with my mirrorless cameras.

I agree to some extent. I don't have problems with battery life on my mirrorless setup either, but it's way less generous than my DSLRs, especially if I take the same approach with each (e.g. not displaying a review image)...

For a general camera I'll get anywhere between 600-2000 shots on one battery. I don't spray my shots either.

I wish you could tell me how to get 600 shots out of one OEM battery on my A7 MkII... It might be possible, I guess, but not the way I want to use it. And that's kind of what I'm referring to above... sure, you can wring more out of the battery if you optimise settings, but that might not gel with how you want to use the camera. In any case, you can optimise utilisation with most DSLRs and get even more battery life.

For my own part, I have the battery grip permanently attached to my A7 MkII... It helps with the general handling, but I need it for battery life if I'm going to be out all afternoon, and certainly all day. It's less of a problem with my Hassleblad HV (Sony A99) due to the larger battery. And with my K-3, I only fit the battery grip if I know I'm going to have a long and heavy day of shooting, or if I want the portrait orientating replication of controls...

[photoptimist]

I agree to some extent. I don't have problems with battery life on my mirrorless setup either, but it's way less generous than my DSLRs, especially if I take the same approach with each (e.g. not displaying a review image)...



I wish you could tell me how to get 600 shots out of one OEM battery on my A7 MkII... It might be possible, I guess, but not the way I want to use it. And that's kind of what I'm referring to above... sure, you can wring more out of the battery if you optimise settings, but that might not gel with how you want to use the camera. In any case, you can optimise utilisation with most DSLRs and get even more battery life.

For my own part, I have the battery grip permanently attached to my A7 MkII... It helps with the general handling, but I need it for battery life if I'm going to be out all afternoon, and certainly all day. It's less of a problem with my Hassleblad HV (Sony A99) due to the larger battery. And with my K-3, I only fit the battery grip if I know I'm going to have a long and heavy day of shooting, or if I want the portrait orientating replication of controls...

The problem with MILCs is that they chew up a lot of battery power just running the sensor and EVF/LCD continuously. You can't zoom/frame/compose the shot with the camera off like you can with a DSLR or RF.

The official CIPA battery life for A7 MkII i 270 to 340 shots depending on whether one uses the EVF or LCD panel, respectively. The CIPA test basically runs the camera for 30 seconds per shot which on a MILC runs the sensor and display continuously and chews up the battery. A better way to look at battery life for a MILC is total on-time, not shots, that Sony gives only about 135 to 170 minutes of on-time life. That on-time could be used to take only 20 shots or 2000.

The trick to getting long battery life from a MILC is to spend no time composing the shot and no time waiting for the subject to do something while the camera is on. If you can do that, you'll get more shots. But that's not always possible or compatible with the way some photographers and photographic scenarios work.

[BigMackCam]

The trick to getting long battery life from a MILC is to spend no time composing the shot and no time waiting for the subject to do something while the camera is on. If you can do that, you'll get more shots.

I'm screwed, then

[Fcsnt54]

I agree to some extent. I don't have problems with battery life on my mirrorless setup either, but it's way less generous than my DSLRs, especially if I take the same approach with each (e.g. not displaying a review image)...



I wish you could tell me how to get 600 shots out of one OEM battery on my A7 MkII... It might be possible, I guess, but not the way I want to use it. And that's kind of what I'm referring to above... sure, you can wring more out of the battery if you optimise settings, but that might not gel with how you want to use the camera. In any case, you can optimise utilisation with most DSLRs and get even more battery life.

For my own part, I have the battery grip permanently attached to my A7 MkII... It helps with the general handling, but I need it for battery life if I'm going to be out all afternoon, and certainly all day. It's less of a problem with my Hassleblad HV (Sony A99) due to the larger battery. And with my K-3, I only fit the battery grip if I know I'm going to have a long and heavy day of shooting, or if I want the portrait orientating replication of controls...

I don't think I'm doing anything special really. Just I turn off image review, and unless I'm ready to shoot I keep the camera turned off. Idk maybe Sony is different, but with Canon and Fuji there are no issues.



---------- Post added 04-12-19 at 05:04 PM ----------

The problem with MILCs is that they chew up a lot of battery power just running the sensor and EVF/LCD continuously. You can't zoom/frame/compose the shot with the camera off like you can with a DSLR or RF.



The official CIPA battery life for A7 MkII i 270 to 340 shots depending on whether one uses the EVF or LCD panel, respectively. The CIPA test basically runs the camera for 30 seconds per shot which on a MILC runs the sensor and display continuously and chews up the battery. A better way to look at battery life for a MILC is total on-time, not shots, that Sony gives only about 135 to 170 minutes of on-time life. That on-time could be used to take only 20 shots or 2000.



The trick to getting long battery life from a MILC is to spend no time composing the shot and no time waiting for the subject to do something while the camera is on. If you can do that, you'll get more shots. But that's not always possible or compatible with the way some photographers and photographic scenarios work.

I mean for me anyways, I don't walk around with my camera up to my eye, but it's not like you need to be cheap with the battery usage to put it mildly... Haha. If you see something about to happen you can turn on the camera, wait, compose, etc much like a DSLR without having to worry about your battery running down. Newer systems are much more energy efficient. And evfs are nowhere close to ovf clear/crisp/lagfree, but they are getting closer.

[reh321]

I think the battery depends on camera and how the person sets it up. To the most part I don't have battery issues at all with my mirrorless cameras. For a general camera I'll get anywhere between 600-2000 shots on one battery. I don't spray my shots either.

With the exception of some wildlife shots, I don't lift the camera to my eye until I have done most of the thinking - then I zoom to frame it, AF, and take the photo. Even with my Q-7, battery life is 'reasonable' .... but not something I would measure since my total shutter count for all cameras is little more than 1K per year.

[Rondec]

An EVF provides a good view no matter how dim the light is - especially an advantage with cameras that provide good high ISO.

An EVF can provide a histograph right in the viewfinder

An EVF provides focus peaking, which can be very good for manual focus.

You don't have to value those advantages - but other users do.

But surely you can see that there are some negatives to MILCs with EVFs -- shorter battery life, sensor always being on and therefore tending to shoot warmer, artifacts from PD AF points on the sensor, dealing with lag, EVF having significantly dynamic range than is actually in the scene, and spoiling of night vision when looking at a very bright screen in a dim situation are all things that come to mind. And the majority of the benefits you state are either things that would show up on the screen when chimping on an SLR or are primarily useful to folks who shoot with manual lenses.

I'm not saying that EVFs are the devil, but they do have some downsides as well and there are reasons that plenty of folks do prefer OVFs.

[house]

For medium format mirrorless seems like great technology. Both in terms of size reduction when getting rid of that huge mirror box and in terms of shooting style. The advantages are reduced with sensor size reduction. As a wide angle to normal shooter there seems to be real advantages as well.

However I hate looking through evfs . The beautiful light of a scene gets scrunched up into a TV like experience lacking in tonal subtleties. Technically its helpful in achieving the shot but ruins the experience.

[RonHendriks1966]

For medium format mirrorless seems like great technology. Both in terms of size reduction when getting rid of that huge mirror box and in terms of shooting style. The advantages are reduced with sensor size reduction. As a wide angle to normal shooter there seems to be real advantages as well.

However I hate looking through evfs . The beautiful light of a scene gets scrunched up into a TV like experience lacking in tonal subtleties. Technically its helpful in achieving the shot but ruins the experience.

Then Q was on wrong path.....

[normhead]

Then Q was on wrong path.....

With predictable results.

The reason my Q doesn't get used more is it's so hard to see the back screen in bright light. Same as my K-01. I bought a thing to turn it into an EVF, but it was just too much fiddling around.

[biz-engineer]

An EVF provides a good view no matter how dim the light is

Yes, although good photographers know that good light is essential to taking good photographs, amateur taken mediocre photographs will try to take photo with poorly illuminated scene. Your argument sounds like a beginner argument to me.

An EVF can provide a histograph right in the viewfinder

Auto exposure determine exposure for having the histogram centered, every other kind of exposure is subjective to photographer intend , histogram doesn't help. Ansel Adams did not have an histogram, he used the zone system and decided to expose for an area of an image where he want to have detail or he knew he could recover with the development process. In DSLR we have sport meters to control exposure of a certain area of a image, in cases of difficult exposure, the global histogram doesn't help. Let say you look through the EVF and you histogram has a U shape, what do you do?... not much. On a DSLR , you spot meter with +2ev compensation on the high light area of the frame, AE lock and that's all you need to do. I would suggest that you read Ansel Adams zone system about exposure, then you'd realize you don't need the histogram in the EVF.

An EVF provides focus peaking, which can be very good for manual focus.

Model lenses all have AF. AF is quicker and more accurate than manual focus (that's why AF was designed for). Be modern.

A lot of Sony and Fuji customers were attracted by features for beginners in photography. But when you are as experience as you are, you don't need all those new gadgets.

Something caught my attention recently: I read that Sony announced a firmware update for adding intervalometer to their A7III, A7rIII series. My Pentax K1 has it since it was released. The other thing that those cameras don't have is rear and front IR remote sensor. Grass is green, even when it's not.

[BigMackCam]

Yes, although good photographers know that good light is essential to taking good photographs, amateur taken mediocre photographs will try to take photo with poorly illuminated scene. Your argument sounds like a beginner argument to me.

I'm going to respectfully disagree, here. In lower light situations - very early morning / early evening, poorly lit indoor scenes where you nevertheless want to maintain what natural lighting exists, etc. - it's nice to have the EVF showing the scene more brightly (albeit with a little noise), whilst working off the live histogram to ensure correct exposure. And it's especially helpful when shooting slower lenses that might otherwise offer a dimmed view through an OVF.

As I said previously, I prefer using an OVF - but there are times when a good EVF can be very useful...

[biz-engineer]

I'm going to respectfully disagree, here. In lower light situations - very early morning / early evening, poorly lit indoor scenes where you nevertheless want to maintain what natural lighting exists, etc. - it's nice to have the EVF showing the scene more brightly (albeit with a little noise), whilst working off the live histogram to ensure correct exposure.

I use live view, because I use a tripod in low light. I don't like to use the viewfinder when the camera is on tripod. Looking through the viewfinder when the camera is on tripod require to bend over because of tripod feet, I feel like being slightly off the camera and adjusting dial in live view mode is perfect in low light situation, if the camera had an EVF I wouldn't bend on the camera, I would still use live view.

For astro photography for example, Sony and Fuji users say their EVF are unusable, they have to use live view. When I do astro with the K1, I crank up the ISO and manually focus on a star, but that wouldn't be working with EVF tech. Apparently, EVF isn't the same as displaying on 3" rear LCD.

[normhead]

A lot of Sony and Fuji customers were attracted by features for beginners in photography. But when you are as experience as you are, you don't need all those new gadgets.

And still don't get good pictures, because they buy cameras thinking the camera itself will do the work for them.

Meanwhile, looking at Camera usage this week on flickr... Sony is in 5th place behind Apple, Canon, Nikon and Samsung in that order. Meanwhile Ricoh (which includes the K-1 and K-3, has moved up three spots to 10th place after being mired in 13 place for as long as I've been keeping track. Funny, no fireworks went off here on the forum. We know all about what's dismal, the Pentax is doomed crowd makes sure of that. But such opinions are almost always formed by ignoring the positives.

Sony's best is the A600 with 604 daily users. The top camera for Pentax the K-1 has 96 users. Somehow that's not the kind of numbers we are used to seeing. IN terms of useage Sony is only 6 times more popular than Pentax, even though Pentax has way less marketshare.

Meanwhile the 5D mkIII has 1516 users and the Nikon 750 has 1200 users. Both more than twice as much as the most popular Sony.

What we're supporting here here is the notion that people who take pictures worthy of sharing are not jumping to mirrorless. Another anomaly, look at the best selling Nikon 36 MP or greater camera the D850, has 552 users. 5 times as many as Pentax K-1 users. And the Canon 5DR has 115 users and the 5Ds has 48 users.

It's amazing how because everyone says Pentax is hovering around 3% market share, that means their camera sells a lot better. But in terms of images produced by 36 MP or greater cameras, Pentax's user base is about 7 percent of the high end Canon's best model usage, 8% of the best Nikons and 17% of the most popular Sony's. Pentax's presence in the market is completely understated using it's market share of the whole market.

The only logical conclusion would be folks who actually take pictures worth posting adopt Pentax at a much higher rate than Joe Schmoe. If Sony has made inroads, it hasn't been with folks who want to share their images. And that's always been the way in these threads. The more experienced are happy with their Pentax gear, the inexperienced who are so far down the "my satisfaction with my images is so low I won't post them" scale that they can't see day light will believe the marketing hype that some fancy doo da camera features will help them take better pictures. It gets tiring seeing some guy unhappy with his photgraphy blaming Pentax for his boring images. They aren't smarter, they are just more susceptible to marketing hype.

Some people buy cameras, some people take good images. Not everyone who buys a camera, no matter how expensive, takes images worth sharing. An expensive brand name camera does not make you a better photographer (unless you're talking a Sony with eye AF for weddings or something like that, though there are reports Canons face recognition is just as good and easier to set up, but wedding cameras make up a very low percentage to cameras sold.). And based on images posted, Sony has very little penetration among experienced photographers.

If people don't know what they actually need in a camera, it's much easier to sell them gimmicks.

People are not going to pay premium prices for the convenience of a local store, if walking to the post office is more convenient, and saves them $50.

[Fcsnt54]

But surely you can see that there are some negatives to MILCs with EVFs -- shorter battery life, sensor always being on and therefore tending to shoot warmer, artifacts from PD AF points on the sensor, dealing with lag, EVF having significantly dynamic range than is actually in the scene, and spoiling of night vision when looking at a very bright screen in a dim situation are all things that come to mind. And the majority of the benefits you state are either things that would show up on the screen when chimping on an SLR or are primarily useful to folks who shoot with manual lenses.



I'm not saying that EVFs are the devil, but they do have some downsides as well and there are reasons that plenty of folks do prefer OVFs.

It's funny how they want you to believe that there is no lag, especially for panning and shooting. I will say though, battery life is not as horrible with current generation of milc. I know what the cipa ratings state, in one camera I can get between 1000-2000 shots and the other easily between 600-1200. I'm not defending milc in a good amount of cases, but that doesn't sound like poor battery life, especially it's not spraying, running and gunning, and normal use much like a DSLR.