First, here are the two columns I wrote predicting/asking for high quality EVF's to replace optical finders going forward:
So why do I think Sony gets it when everyone else is stuck at 2004? When I first picked up an Olympus EP-2 with the VF2 finder on it I knew I was looking at the future of professional digital cameras. Not because the EP-2 was so incredible (and for many reasons it was) but because the EVF was such a revelation. You could see what you'd really get. When you look through an optical finder you're seeing an image that's always at a wide open aperture setting, and it's beguiling with a narrow depth of field and a bright image. But a great EVF shows you what you're really going to end up with once you push the button. It's reading all the stuff you shoved in ROM and it's finessing the image exactly the way you requested. If you set a color balance manually it's showing you THAT color balance in the finder. No surprises. If you set f11 or f1.4 the EVF is showing you the exact DOF you'll end up with. The only two glitches were the shooting delay caused by moving mirrors and the fact that early EVF's sucked in low light. As the camera's files got darker and noisier so did the finder image. That was/is the Achille's heel of my beloved Sony R1......
