Developments of the viewfinder system in digital photographic cameras

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Photography, Cinema, Telelvision Faculty of Applied Arts Helwan University

2 Assistant Professor, Department of Photography, Film and Television, Faculty of Applied Arts - 6th of October University

3 Assistant Professor at the Department of Photography, Cinema, and TV Faculty of Applied Arts – 6 October University

Abstract

The viewfinder systems in digital cameras witnessed multiple vision identification systems, like the digital single-lens reflex camera (DSLR), which uses optical viewfinder systems (OVFs), and was considered a scientific breakthrough until some problems appeared in various applications, like the camera size and weight, and number of frames per second. With the emergence of mirrorless cameras that use the electronic viewfinder system (EVFs), some of these problems were solved due to the difference in the EVFs technology, the way the image is seen and recorded on the image sensor. However, other problems appeared like the large consumption of battery power by the EVF and the electronic image sensor.

The research questions
Due to arising problems in the DSLR camera technology and its optical viewfinders (OVFs), and the production of the mirrorless camera technology with their electronic viewfinders (EVFs) system, this research aims to study the different characteristics of both the OVFs and EVFs to determine the extent to which the mirrorless cameras have been able to tackle some of these problems, which can be limited in this research to the following: -
- the digital viewfinder system,
- the size and weight of the camera,
- frames per second.

The research objectives
This research seeks to study the recent systems of viewfinders (EVFs and OVFs) to identify the different characteristics of each to determine the extent to which the aforementioned problems were solved, and their impact on the camera performance in general.

Research Methodology
This research adopts the descriptive-analytical method.

Key Words
Digital single-lens reflex camera (DSLR), mirrorless camera, optical viewfinders (OVFs), electronic viewfinders (EVFs).

Keywords

Main Subjects