Originally posted by Al_Kahollick What other
modern cameras offer this?? I would think since a vast majority of shooters do so with the camera at eye level, built in blinds add an un-necessary expense. A piece of gaffers tape, or even draping your strap over the eyepiece will do in a pinch.
I'll take weather sealing over a built in eyepiece cover any day!
I haven't shopped for a camera outside of Pentax, so I haven't noticed this feature on other current models.
Tape won't work because even gaffer tape isn't THAT reusable - it sticks to itself, collects dirt when detached, etc. It's great for semi-permanently covering the lens release button, so when the button falls off your k5, you won't lose it, but it's not useful for a viewfinder blind. And draping the strap is too delicate an operation, and something that even just a little breeze could blow off. I probably used the blind on my film cameras for over 10,000 exposures. If you multiply the time it takes to do anything other than flip a lever by 10,000 times, it's not trivial, and I'm not a professional that's shooting every day. Yes, you can cover it with some object, and I do that, but then you need to remember to keep yet another object in your pocket (and remember it), and since you have to hold it, you occasionally touch the camera and induce vibration. So a built-in blind is definitely a common requirement for which there's no good alternative.
I like weather-sealing too, but that's a more complicated and expensive feature to implement.
It's also true that at least some older film cameras had superior digital viewfinder displays (aperture, shutter speed) than Pentax DSLRs, at least up through the k5 era. Certainly not as much information (iso, shake reduction, etc.) but the displays handled high ambient light much better, so it wasn't just a matter of character size. So while we've gained many capabiliities, we've lost a few, too.