To say that I have a very strong dislike of using a camera with a screen instead of a viewfinder would be an understatement! I find them an obstacle to getting an image.  I’ve always said that the job of a camera is to not get in the way of taking a photo. Some technical limitations, handling/size issues make using certain kit hard or near impossible for certain tasks, and for me using a screen instead of a viewfinder almost always will do that.

There are several issues to a screen, a refresh lag, as what you see has to be processed via the camera’s on-board processor and then displayed to you, so by the time you see something on the screen that moment has passed, making it harder to capture a specific moment. However, for me the bigger obstacle is how we interact with a screen in comparison to a viewfinder. It can be boiled down to a simple phrase: We look through a viewfinder, we look at a screen.

While using a screen it is invariably held away from the face, by about a foot (or more if you are an arm length shooter). What this means is that our attention is focused down onto the screen (we look at it) rather than the scene we are trying to photograph. The screen holds our attention in a way similar to a television, especially the bigger brighter screens they are almost worse for this than the small screens on old compacts. The proximity of the screen to our face also means that when we want to look at the subject properly we have to shift the camera and wait for our eyes to refocus, slowing things down.  The viewfinder, on the other hand, is something we look through and as such does not get in our way. We observe what is going on, without having our attention distracted by looking at a small object in our hands. The camera becomes more of an extension of ourselves, part of our vision, allowing us to focus our attention on the subject we wish to photograph rather than the physical object in our hands that has to be observed and monitored.

The use of the screen on compacts, is one thing that I find frustrating, as I search for a decent digital rangefinder equivalent, oh how I wish i had the cash for a leica M9. The new micro 4/3 compacts are very promising, especially those that have an electronic view finder as well as a screen on the back. Having had a quick play with the Panasonic GF1 and it’s viewfinder I found it ok, but not great. Like all EVFs there is still the lag on what you see, making you have to adjust your shooting style more, and it was a little small and low-res. The new EP2 is interesting with it’s EVF which i thinks is a better size and resolution. For those compacts that are aimed at a photographers market more than just a mass consumer one, I wish that the companies would introduce a decent optical viewfinder, especially on the cameras like the Ricoh GR-D, which has a fixed lens, so should be even easier!

All this said, I do have a bit of a fascination with screens also. The proliferation of camera phones, and digital compacts has created something of an obsession for me, taking pictures of other people taking pictures, but at the same time, seeing what they are looking at. When I’m out at fairs or parades I seem to have some sort of compulsion to capture these tiny views of a scene. It’s a love/hate thing.

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