Originally posted by jfsavage I only ever looked at the lower end Olympus cameras, and they were 'keyhole viewfinders', which removed Olympus from my consideration immediately. How does the E-3 compare with the K20 - have they managed to make it as big and bright? If they have, then bigger viewfinders should be possible for APS-C cameras as well. One of the things I loved about the Canon 5D was the viewfinder.
Pretty much the same size I guess! I was pleasantly surprised when I used the E-3, the viewfinder's great. The proportions are different though, it's 'squarer' hehe. Pretty cool though.
I know what you mean about the other Oly viewfinders but the E-3 was great.
One thing I really pretty cool is the eyepiece shutter hehe.
I ALMOST bought the E-3 over the K20D. It's a real pleasure to use, it's a very fast and responsive system, and they have the best zooms that are sealed too! Imagine the coverage of these two lenses:
# ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 12-60mm (24-120mm) 1:2.8-4.0 SWD
# ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 50-200mm (100-400mm) 1:2.8-3.5 SWD
You've got effective FOV of 24mm-400mm in 2 lenses, with f/2.8-4 and f/2.8/3.5! And those two lenses are VERY sharp all the way to the corners!
The deal-killer was the sensor
From dpreview:
Viewfinder
One of the big differences between the E-3 and just about every other Four-Thirds SLR ever made is that Olympus has put a huge amount of effort into producing a viewfinder that doesn't suffer from the 'looking down a tunnel' problem arising from the smaller sensor format. And to its credit the result is very impressive; with a true 100% field of view and 1.15x magnification it's as good as most APS sensor cameras, and a good deal better than many. There is an eyepiece shutter (for ensuring accurate metering in live view mode) and a dioptre adjustment dial just to the right of the eyepiece.
Comparing the E-3's viewfinder directly to the Nikon D300 and the Canon EOS 40D it's obvious that Olympus has done a superb job of overcoming the limitations imposed by the smaller format - it's easily as big and as bright (in fact the 4:3 format means it's actually slightly larger).
The viewfinder isn't only bigger and brighter than previous E-System cameras; there's differences in what you see when you look through it too. Obviously there's now more focus points (up from three to 11), but we were also pleased to see that Olympus has moved the (redesigned) information display back to the bottom of the frame too (consumer level E-system cameras have their information displays to he right of the frame, which is much more difficult to see).
Viewfinder information is comprehensive and, importantly, includes ISO sensitivity.