August 24, 2010

• PURE EVIL.

  SONY = SAURON?

  Today is a day that will live in digital infamy. All photographers will remember August 24th as the beginning of the end. Goodbye, optical viewfinder.

  Okay, am I exaggerating just a little? It depends on who you ask. Here’s the facts- today, Sony announced the first really serious incarnation of an “EVIL” DSLR, in the form of the A33 and A55. They are now called “SLT” cameras, the “T” standing for translucent instead of “reflex” like in SLR. And EVIL stands for “electronic viewfinder, interchangeable lenses”. What Sony has done is replaced the standard SLR parts (mirror and shutter) with new parts. No shutter, (I think) and a new mirror system that doesn’t move, it just splits the light to two different sensors, one for autofocus and one the real image sensor.

  Doesn’t sound evil yet, you say? I forgot to mention that there is no prism, no optical viewfinder whatsoever. Just the LCD on the back of the camera, and another LCD inside the viewfinder. That’s right, you don’t get to see the real world when you look through the viewfinder, you just see another little screen.

  Purists are most likely doing harm to themselves in medieval ways right now. And I’m not talking about the monk scene in Monty Python.

  Read it and weep, fellow camera geeks: http://www.dpreview.com/news/1008/10082421sonyslta55a33.asp

  Make no mistake, this affects us all. If you ask the glass-half-empty crowd, this signals the beginning of optical viewfinder extinction. It starts with Sony’s entry level SLT’s, catches on with the hip young digital generation, and spreads to other camera makers, to other classes of advanced and professional cameras, until maybe a distant future successor to the Canon 5D mk2, or Nikon D700, could have an electronic viewfinder… Say it ain’t so!!!

  Because the bottom line is that camera companies don’t actually care, they make whatever sells. And if EVF’s sell as well as it sounds like they will; we can expect a LOT more of them in the future…

  I would encourage Sony users to ‘abandon ship’ like it’s the Titanic, but I think it’s too late. In the review posted above and in other internet chatter, the system is already being well-received and praised for it’s newfound versatility. And the flaws in the system are not receiving very much press at all. So, Sony users, (and eventually everybody else) …the end is near. Iceberg dead ahead, captain.

  …Okay, enough with the doomsday analogies, I’ve had my fun. Seriously now, what does this all mean, and is it all bad? Let’s weigh the facts.

  * It’s an EVF. (Electronic ViewFinder) That means that when you raise your camera to your eye, you don’t see the real world, you see another electronic screen. I don’t like screens, monitors, TV’s, etc. I have to stare at them enough these days, and it makes my eyes hurt. Adding yet another LCD display to my life makes my stomach turn.

  * But evolution is inevitable. Just consider the serious compromises we’ve already put up with over the years in the viewfinder department alone. Ever looked through the viewfinder of an early 80′s 35mm SLR? How about the prism of a Hasselblad? Truly a glorious view. Even my mediocre Nikon FM2 (1982-1984) has a viewfinder that BLOWS AWAY the latest most expensive DSLR’s, as far as size is concerned. I also like how you always see the true depth of field because the focus screen is optimized for manual focusing. Anywho my point is that EVIL is inevitable and we’ve already survived plenty of huge compromises in the past, WRT viewfinders alone. Remember the Nikon D70 viewfinder? Talk about light at the end of a tunnel.

  * The question is, will it really take over the entire market, and will *ALL* DSLR’s eventually become EVIL? I honestly doubt it. They’ll become popular, and they’ll gain market share, but I highly doubt optical viewfinders will go away altogether.

  …So, what are the advantages and dis-advantages?

  * With EVIL, you get full-time phase-detect autofocus even while in live view AND while recording video. What the heck is phase-detect? Don’t worry about the science behind it. Just know that phase-detect is the good, fast AF in DSLR’s, and contrast-detect is the lame, slow AF you have in a point-and-shoot. So, I guess this is a step forward in general, a “win” for digital technology as a whole.

  * With EVIL, you get tons of new live readouts in the viewfinder. The most important things are going to be live exposure simulation, histogram viewing, and highlight warning. Just think about it- You’ll DRAMATICALLY reduce the number of completely ruined exposures because every time you look though the viewfinder, you’ll automatically SEE the final image before you capture it. Too dark or too light, you instantly know and just turn a dial in the direction you want. Especially in P mode, you won’t need hardly any working knowledge of camera settings, you just turn a dial or two. Imagine how quickly everyone will learn photography!

  * Silent shooting. Again, no mirror + no shutter = no sound. COMPLETE silence. This will be great for trigger happy wedding photographers who disrespectfully blaze away at 10 FPS during a ceremony. Now you can shoot 2,000 images during the ceremony and nobody will ever know. Or you can shoot during those dead silent moments in a golf tournament, like some professionals have already done with misc. P&S cameras.

  * Oh, and did I mention these cameras can hit 6-10 FPS? Without that pesky mirror and shutter to deal with, you can really juice your camera’s performance for cheap, it’s just a matter of processor speed. And CPU’s get faster and faster, buffers get bigger, until cameras like RED (google it) are affordable enough for the masses, and all we’ll have to do is record video, and afterward sort through a practically continuous stream of 10+ megapixel images. Imagine what that will do for bracketing exposure and focus!

  …But enough about the advantages. What about the disadvantages?

  * As I mentioned, my eyes already hurt from looking at computer screens all day. Now I have to look at another screen when I raise my camera to my eye?

  * Reduced battery life. Of course I’m sure batteries will always be improving, so I won’t dwell on this much, but for now the two new Sony cameras have been rated at just a couple / few hundred clicks on one battery. That’s laughable; I get 100+ images per each ONE PERCENT of battery power on my old, outdated D300.

  * LAG! In case you didn’t notice, there is always a fraction of a second worth of lag between a video feed and it’s display. A true photojournalist would be MORTIFIED to think that they have to time their candid moments with a lag time involved. However, I won’t dwell on this point too much because I’m sure that the future probably holds some advanced technology that virtually eliminates lag time… And I haven’t handled either of these cameras yet so I can’t speak to their performance, but so far there aren’t any major complaints.

  * All sorts of new image issues to deal with. Since the camera now works by actually capturing images THROUGH a piece of glass / mirror, I’m betting you can kiss some low-light performance goodbye, while saying hello to one or two weird artifact or aberration / ghosting issues in tough lighting conditions. I don’t know what they are yet, but I guarantee you they’ll pop up. And so will many other issues, now that they’ve added yet another fully electronic aspect to our imaging tools. Dead pixels in the viewfinder. That weird rainbow alias-y effect. Connections shorting out. …It’s just more to go wrong.

  …And LASTLY, we need to discuss how this affects the world of photography as a whole. I’ve already mentioned just how much easier it’s going to be to make perfectly exposed, sharp images.

  The advent of digital photography already eliminated many of the barriers of entry between amateur photographers and professionals. All thanks to the LCD on the back of the camera, and $50 memory cards that can hold “1.2k” images. And Photoshop.

  Now that we’ll soon have electronic viewfinders, beginners will learn about exposure practically overnight. Like, literally within days, and maybe even without truly understanding shutter speed, aperture, or ISO… Then there’s the aspect of high-speed shooting. The faster cameras get, the larger the buffers etc, …the more it will become a lost art to anticipate and perfectly time that one *click* that captures a memorable moment.

  So the bottom line is that the bar for attaining mediocre / decent images will yet again be lowered. Which does two things- 1.) It inherently RAISES the bar for truly standing out as an artist with creative vision, and 2.) It shrinks the professional industry to an even smaller size. The market for “decent” images is no longer a professional market at all, it is a market for the hobbyist, the side-job.

  Should professionals worry about this? YES, if they’re not professionally trained in business strategy. Your business model could fail practically overnight sometime in the next 5 years, if it hasn’t already. Unless you’re the next Henri Cartier Bresson, your business can’t be about the images you create. It has to be about everything ELSE that makes you a professional.

  Personally, I like to think about three things- professional service leading up to the wedding, performance under pressure on the wedding day, and peace of mind after the wedding. Those are the things I can offer a client that uncle Bob, or cousin Jill, cannot. I have nerves of steel, a calm, cool attitude, and most importantly years of experience at dozens of weddings. So when things go awry, I guarantee that I won’t panic and start taking terrible pictures. And after the wedding, I can guarantee that client’s images are backed up like crazy; I don’t go to sleep on the wedding night until I have at least three copies of my data, and one of them is off-site. And so on and so forth.

  But enough about that. I’m not a business guru by any stretch of the imagination, and that does NOT constitute business advice that YOU should follow if you’re also a full-time freelance professional.

  Back to EVF’s. Are they a good or a bad thing? It depends on who you are and what you feel about the evolution of digital technology. At the end of the day, you just have to ask yourself- When you raise your camera to your eye, what do you want to see? A high-tech display that gives you all the information you need to easily create a great image, OR the real world? Honestly, I’m tempted to give it a try, even though I know I won’t ever be able to fully embrace it. The day Nikon makes their pro DSLR’s with EVF’s will probably be the day I stockpile a bunch of old use D700′s for $900 or something.

  =Matt=

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