Canon EOS-10DCanon revamps their hugely popular D60 SLR, with ahost of improvements and a dramatic price cut!<<Design :(Previous) | (Next): Optics>> Page 4:ViewfinderReview First Posted: 02/27/2003 |
Viewfinder
Virtually identical to the D60's viewfinder, the 10D's optical viewfinder is
again excellent, providing a wealth of information and great accuracy. Because
the 10D now features seven AF points, the viewfinder shows seven focus point
boxes arrayed in a cross pattern. (This is the only difference I can see in
the 10D's viewfinder, relative to that of the D60.) Lining the bottom of the
display is a strip of information reporting everything from aperture and shutter
speed to flash status and the maximum number of burst shots available. While
I don't have a formal test for it, the "eyepoint" of the viewfinder
seemed fairly high, making it usable with eyeglasses, although I had to press
the lenses of my glasses up against the eyecup to see the full viewfinder area.
The dioptric correction is also excellent, covering a broad range from -3 to
+1 diopters. I measured its accuracy at 95.6 percent, closely agreeing with
Canon's official specification of 95 percent frame coverage. (I have to say
though, that I'd really like to see it be a full 100% coverage. Viewfinder inaccuracy
is a pet peeve of mine.) The viewfinder display conveys a lot of information
about exposure and camera status, as shown in the illustration below. (Courtesy
Canon USA, Inc.)
It's important to note in discussing the 10D's viewfinder system is that
the rear-panel LCD display is not usable as a viewfinder. Instead,
the optical viewfinder uses a mirror to intercept the image on the way to
the shutter and the sensor. Thus, when the camera isn't actively taking a
picture, the light from the lens is directed only to the optical viewfinder,
and so isn't available to the sensor to drive a live viewfinder display on
the LCD. With the exception of the Olympus E-10 and E-20 (which use a beam-splitter
prism instead of a mirror, at some cost in light sensitivity), all digital
SLRs operate in this fashion.
While
not strictly a viewfinder function, the capture-mode Info display shown on
the rear-panel LCD screen deserves mention here. The optical viewfinder carries
quite a bit of information about camera status as shown above, but there's
even more available on the rear panel, just by pressing the Info button. Rather
than the exposure settings shown in the optical viewfinder, this display shows
date/time, autoexposure bracketing amount, white balance bracketing amount,
processing parameter setting, image review status, image review time, color
temperature setting (if selected), ISO speed, auto rotate status, auto power
off time, flash exposure compensation amount, and megabytes of remaining memory
card capacity. Between this screen, the optical viewfinder display, and the
LCD data readout on the camera's top, the 10D offers no shortage of information.
Here's what all the numbers and indicators in the information display mean:
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