Why not a film camera with an EVF?

[Crimeo]

The EVF does not. Many folks seem to be expecting the EVF to preview what you will record on film. It can't.

It just seems a silly idea.

It can get like 90-95% close which is 30% closer than it needs to be to serve the job of helping you compose better.

The competitor here it is being pitted against in other film cameras is "Your brain", and your brain definitely cannot accurately visualize a specific film stock and spectral response etc. anywhere near as consistently and precisely as an EVF can.

This is one of the least important functions anyway, though, Exposure preview and histogram, focus peaking, customizable screen info, better autofocus than film era SLRs, etc. all apply even without the filmic simulation being considered.

 

[Crimeo]

I wasn't talking about comparison of weight, I meant comparison of use. You're proposing removing the optical view from an slr and replacing it with an electronic one. And this isn't something that would be cheap, by the way. An EVF in a mirrorless is a little high-quality screen, feeding and image from the camera's sensor, through an eyepiece with high quality lenses. Now, you would need not only the screen and the way to view it but also a sensor - presumably a full-frame sensor.

How much would that cost? It's the majority of a mirrorless camera body.

Yeah I said in the first sentence "slap a sensor above the mirror where the focusing screen normally would be.

For cost, I think you can just look at modern era full frame DSLR cost and then adjust absed on what can be left out and what needs to be added. A Pentax FF DLSR with high end sensor, all the bells and whistles, IBIS, everything costs $1800 today.

* Go ahead and remove the IBIS, since film can't use it: -$250
* The Pentax has a crazy fancy piston articulating in 3 dimensions LCD screen on the back, don't need one at all: -$150 probably
* We do have to add a film advance. Looking at the cost of a P17, the film advance alone is maybe $150-200? If you need motor drive, more.

$1800 - 400 + 200 = $1600 maybe all in. I think that's reasonable.

 

[_T_]

I’m fairly certain that most film photographers, given the choice between an optical viewfinder, as currently available in the form of countless vintage slrs already on the market for a couple/few hundred dollars, and the evf you’re proposing would choose the optical viewfinder. Honestly I would choose a vintage camera with an optical viewfinder even if your idea ended up costing only a couple hundred bucks, let alone $1,500

 

[Crimeo]

Film cameras don't have a main (digital) sensor, let alone one capable of live view. So you would have to add a full-frame sensor

This is addressed in the first sentence of the thread: the sensor would be where the focus plane normally is in a film SLR.

And the preview would be only marginally related to the characteristics of the film. What happens when you change to a film with a different ISO, or exposure latitude (like color negative vs slide?)

You push buttons...? An EVF can support a full modern day super fancy high res menu, by the way. If you just have normal 4 way directional buttons and whatever like any DSLR already has or 90s film SLRs already have, they can operate the menu viewed through the EVF for very advanced and extensive menus for anything your heart may desire, similar to normal modern cameras. Including any degree of desired specificity of film stock, expected color profile (including being able to predict how you will grade it in post), ISO, offsets for more or less than usual grain, pushing, pulling, whatever.

In the film days, studio photographers would take a Polaroid, and they wouldn't assume their Ektachrome was going to come out looking exactly like the Polaroid. They had an understanding of what the imperfect Polaroid could or could not tell them (about lighting balance, etc) based on experience. An EVF is not going to replace experience.

Your example supports the idea of the thread / my position, not yours... yes people were able to understand that a preview isn't 100.000% accurate, and use their brains to work around that info, and yet the preview was still very helpful anyway. If non-100%-accuracy was a dealbreaker, why did they still use polaroids that were like 30% accurate?

A modern EVF can be probably 5-10x closer to the final reality than a polaroid would be. If even the polaroid was still useful, this is far MORE useful still.

 

[Crimeo]

I’m fairly certain that most film photographers, given the choice between an optical viewfinder, as currently available in the form of countless vintage slrs already on the market for a couple/few hundred dollars, and the evf you’re proposing would choose the optical viewfinder. Honestly I would choose a vintage camera with an optical viewfinder even if your idea ended up costing only a couple hundred bucks, let alone $1,500

Explain why literally 100% of the whole industry today uses EVFs whenever it's a possible option, if you think customers don't prefer EVFs?

 

[_T_]

Explain why literally 100% of the whole industry today uses EVFs whenever it's a possible option, if you think customers don't prefer EVFs?

I’m not saying there’s no market for cameras with evfs, I’m saying the kind of person who wants to shoot film is the kind of person who wants an optical viewfinder.

There are a number of reasons to prefer an optical viewfinder, and certainly I’m still not happy with evfs on mirrorless cameras, where they make the most sense. If they could reduce the flange focal distance of a DSLR to 18mm I would still be using a DSLR

 

[Europan]

Kodak’s latest Super-8 camera has an EVF.

 

[wiltw]

Explain why literally 100% of the whole industry today uses EVFs whenever it's a possible option, if you think customers don't prefer EVFs?

'Prefer' is not the right term, 'stuck with' is better description...it is just that the mirrorless marketeers have come up with pitching a number of 'benefits' to the consumer so that consumers would overlook the disadvantages!
Have you ever wondered why the mirrorless design had failed to exceed 4.1 Million worldwide units sold, until finally it broke thru that ceiling last year, after 17 years had passed (since the 4/3 format was launched with its initial reliance on EVF)?! It took that long for the buying community to overcome the many reasons to not buy. Mirrorless has not taken the market by storm, it merely has survived in a dying market for cameras, after the marketeers could figure out enough benefits to pitch.
Do enough photographers need to 'see in the dark' if the slowness of shutter speed for image capture on film is inherently defeated by any subject motion?!
Do enough film shooters need immediacy of image review prior to exposure?
Will enough film shooters give up a relative independence from battery life, in exchange for the faster battery consumption of the EVF?

ImBack has a small niche market with retrofit digital capture for SLRs. This has an even smaller potential niche market in retrofit digital viewing for SLRs.

 

[MattKing]

This is an SLR. Depth of field preview requires no additional effort at all versus any normal camera, because the sensor is seeing through the lens and through the aperture already. A normal DOF preview that just stops the aperture down like exists on most cameras will correctly preview it on the EVF with no extra tech

The depth of field previews in SLRs aren't particularly reliable - they give one a sense of the result, but the effective viewing distance and the way the viewing systems work mean that they are inherently somewhat misleading.
With experience, one learns to predict how they mislead, and account for that.
Even without them, experience is often a better indicator of how the depth of field will actually appear on a print.
An EVF and some processing software could probably improve the situation - so that would be one of the pluses of your idea.

 

[xkaes]

I’m fairly certain that most film photographers, given the choice between an optical viewfinder, as currently available in the form of countless vintage slrs already on the market for a couple/few hundred dollars, and the evf you’re proposing would choose the optical viewfinder. Honestly I would choose a vintage camera with an optical viewfinder even if your idea ended up costing only a couple hundred bucks, let alone $1,500

I'm in your camp, but I imagine a lot of people would appreciate an EFV in a film camera -- because of all it can do that a regular viewfinder can't. Of course, much would depend on the price factor.

One reason I chose a Sony a850/a900 is because it has a viewfinder, NOT an EVF (which I appreciate in my tiny Minolta A2). For some reason, I like a camera that shows me the image created by the lens -- without having to turn it ON.

 

[MattKing]

(They paid $500 in droves for a zone focus half frame with equivalent f/5 lens)

A friend has a Pentax 17. The results I have seen with it are amazingly good.
Scale focusing works well for me:

Memorial Bench - October 2024

• MattKing
• Oct 30, 2024
• 1

A newly installed memorial bench facing toward one of my favorite sites in the North 40 Lands...

Picnic

• MattKing
• Jun 30, 2015
• 5

For the Geometry MSA - a detail of a park picnic table, and the shadows it creates in the sun.

 

[koraks]

Explain why literally 100% of the whole industry today uses EVFs whenever it's a possible option

Cheaper
More compact

 

[Crimeo]

The depth of field previews in SLRs aren't particularly reliable - they give one a sense of the result, but the effective viewing distance and the way the viewing systems work mean that they are inherently somewhat misleading.
With experience, one learns to predict how they mislead, and account for that.
Even without them, experience is often a better indicator of how the depth of field will actually appear on a print.
An EVF and some processing software could probably improve the situation - so that would be one of the pluses of your idea.

That is true for a traditional OVF btu NOT for an EVF as proposed here. There is no additional offset from the focusing screen going on up into a prism blah blah because no prism. The sensor here would be right at exactly the same distance as the film plane, and the light stops right there. All further travel is in the form of information on wires which has zero optical distortion (since it's not optics). And the blur as depicted on an OLED screen doesn't change on the way to your eye viewing it. (you can defocus the whole screen but not some things in the image and not others)

DOF preview here would be 100% perfectly accurate, that's one of the advantages actually.

 

[Crimeo]

A friend has a Pentax 17. The results I have seen with it are amazingly good.
Scale focusing works well for me:

f/5 (35mm equiv) or smaller can of course easily look great. And I didn't say it wasn't sharp. But f/5 it's very limited versus an f/1.4 equivalent standard to the 35mm pro/serious market. (which would need to be f/1.0 to look the same on half frame), in that you simply can't get anything close to the same shallow DOF if you want to. Nor nearly as good low light performance (no IS either unlike possible on a film camera with an e.g. EOS mount).

Zone focus is not unusable, but it is very slow and crude compared to modern autofocus this could support easily, will lead to more misses, and most importantly, it's a bottleneck to making the lens brighter (see f/1.0 equivalent competitive lens mentioned above)

P17 is also not an SLR so has parallax and lacks DOF preview, other advantages this would have. Nor can it do macro... or tele shots... no interchangeable lenses... etc. etc.

I'm not shitting on the P17, it's a cool decent camera, but it's just WAY WAY less performative than this proposed camera would be. So the 3x higher price tag is realistic judging by the success of the P17, that's all I'm saying and the only reason for bringing it up.

-----------

That said, Pentax would definitely make more money than either this or the P17 with a new remake of a classic 90s style autofocus pocketable new point and shoot with a bright nice lens, some minimal manual override exposure compensation ability, and warranty. The good ones on ebay are many $100s-$1,000s unlike SLRs, and it's what the kiddos want, so it would sell like hotcakes.

They should definitely dot hat first, before any wacky proposals like this.

 

[Patrick Robert James]

EVFs suck. There I said it. And the whole "the camera is smaller" thing is a canard because every lens then has to be bigger. Physics.... In the end you end up needing more space for everything.

EVF/mirrorless was a way for manufacturers to push "new" on us while obviously selling more stuff, especially since they pretty much maxed out the megapixel thing.

 

[Crimeo]

EVFs suck. There I said it. And the whole "the camera is smaller" thing is a canard because every lens then has to be bigger. Physics.... In the end you end up needing more space for everything.

EVF/mirrorless was a way for manufacturers to push "new" on us while obviously selling more stuff, especially since they pretty much maxed out the megapixel thing.

If the only common advantage were size, and if your claim that size doesn't pan out anyway were true for sake of argument, then EVFs and mirrorless simply would not have taken over the market. They would have been a flop, but they were instead an overwhelming coup.

Either 1) it is about the size and bulk and the size is not counteracted, (and/)OR 2) it's the large array of fancy features you get that people want (which are the things being brought to the table in this proposal too): exposure preview, white balance preview, histograms and custom overlays, peaking, zebras, accurate DOF, better autofocus, and so on that all come with a "smart" viewfinder.

There is also adapting old glass, which this misses out on but normal mirrorless has, but I doubt more than like 20% of customers do much or any of that regularly. So why else did they take over the whole market in your estimation?

 

[gbroadbridge]

I can imagine a future where Canon/Nikon introduce a new film SLR.
(heck, if people are making new films - anything is possible)

I cannot imaging them slipping in a live display unless it's a low quality feed from some beam splitter design.

 

[mshchem]

Even the best EVF (OMG LEICA HAS DONE IT) kinda hurts my eye/brain.

I'll never forget I had my RZ67II set up on a tripod and let a very cool lady I worked with look through it, fast normal lens. She gasped! She said it's so clear! She was used to looking through a kit zoom on a Canon AE1.

Of course a proper EVF could really rock. Bright etc. If anyone could accomplish this it would be Fuji and a China company. Technical/Manufacturing. Would need a clean sheet design and utilize much different glass.

Not

 

[Crimeo]

Why did they take over the market? Because they were new, and manufacturers wanted to abandon SLRs due to cost. Most people don't know what the hell they are looking at anyway. Just a fact of life. The vast majority of cameras are sold to debutantes who don't know shit from shinola. Pretty easy to sell them something inferior as long as it is shiny. And a lot of people also have to have the newest camera due to their ego regardless of whether it is better or not.

Manufacturers ALWAYS want to reduce costs. Every single year back to the dawn of photography, every single other industry too. Every single context. Always. That doesn't in itself ever explain any change that happens, because it's constant and thus never suddenly comes up to trigger a sudden change.

They are blocked normally and can't, unless consumers actually like the new thing/change as much or more than what came before. Which means they couldn't have done this unless consumers LIKED EVFs. Period, it's just not how economics works otherwise.

By your logic, if "companies just wanting to spend less" was enough of an explanation all by itself, ignoring consumers, then why didn't every manufacturer all switch to 70% coverage penta-mirrors in 1995? And max speed 1/500th second shutters? And remove all motor drives? Much cheaper! And apparently consumers don't matter to you and have no idea what tools they're using, so all these things should have happened.

Those things didn't happen then, because people do know what they're shooting, and wouldn't have accepted the worse product for the same price. It did happen with EVFs and it only could happen because people who do (and always did) know what they're doing do in fact consider EVFs better or at least equally good.

Just look at the abomination that is the latest Leica M. They pushed that hard. I was getting bombarded by crap on social media from every "photo influencer" about how great it was even though it was easily discernible that they didn't believe their own b.s. Leica must have gotten hemorrhoids trying to push that turd out.

This example is not relevant to the argument unless/until that model and its features takes the whole photography industry by storm and do gangbuster amazing sales, and spark competitors to scramble to match, etc.

 

[reddesert]

Your example supports the idea of the thread / my position, not yours... yes people were able to understand that a preview isn't 100.000% accurate, and use their brains to work around that info, and yet the preview was still very helpful anyway. If non-100%-accuracy was a dealbreaker, why did they still use polaroids that were like 30% accurate?

A modern EVF can be probably 5-10x closer to the final reality than a polaroid would be. If even the polaroid was still useful, this is far MORE useful still.

The Polaroid was a useful preview for a studio photographer with experience, time to setup, and expenses: Polaroid film was expensive, but studio setup and time was more expensive, so burning Polaroids to get the lighting right was worth it. (To be clear, I was never myself a studio photographer or assistant back then.) Most photographers these days, even film photographers, aren't taking that kind of time.

BITD, amateurs or casual photographers almost never used Polaroids for preview of non-instant film in the way that I'm describing. I think some wedding photographers might have run off a few Polaroids for setup shots, but for the majority of their shots they would trust the viewfinder, exposure meter, and experience.

I don't hate EVFs, but I think this hypothetical product of a film camera with an EVF introduces a lot of complexity and doesn't have an audience. It would be for people who want to use film, but want the technological add-on; and need the preview rather than relying on experience and the viewfinder to set up the shot, but are willing to devote enough experience to understand the very imperfect relation between the EVF and the film (the way that the studio photographer understood the relation between Polaroid and final product). Just for example, digital EVF, C-41, and slide film each handle/blow-out the highlights differently. That's one place it would go south and the users would blame the camera. No manufacturer wants that reputation.

You started the thread to ask why it didn't exist, people are telling you why, and you're arguing with it, which is your prerogative, but doesn't lead to development of an product.

 

[MattKing]

EVF's may reduce costs, but the efficiencies they add are far more important than that.
They do away with a need for moving mirrors (or pellicles) and by doing so they permit much shorter flange distances.
Less mechanical complexity, less noise, less vibration.
They help make small, high resolution sensors much more practical.
They make lenses simpler - no need for open aperture metering.
Having an EVF makes all those advantages possible.

 

[Crimeo]

You started the thread to ask why it didn't exist, people are telling you why

My point is they're not, though. An answer isn't actually why if it doesn't add up. In this example, "Because previews are useless if they don't match 100%, and this won't PERFECTLY simulate film!!" was one of the reasons given, but doesn't align with observed reality.

Polaroids being used (very very imperfect) is one niche example of "100% accuracy" not being a dealbreaker for previews, but it not being a dealbreakers extends all the way through down to the most amateur of all photographers as well. Do you think little kids in the 1960s shooting with a cardboard brownie got an accurate preview of the image through the crappy little thumbnail viewfinder lens? No, did that halt all sales? No. How about any serious adult photographer with even the nicest Leica rangefinder? No again (no DOF preview at all, again parallax, no preview whatsoever of exposure darkness or brightness that the film will see...), yet normal everyday consumers bought things with these limitations all the time.

People always preferred more accurate simulations, hence SLRs taking over later, and more viewfinder coverage being preferred, and DOF buttons being a desired premium feature, etc. But they didn't need any minimum amount of accuracy, and amateurs are perfectly capable of understanding that the preview isn't perfect. Just the closer it is, the better.

And EVFs are much closer than OVFs are to accurate. So people prefer them generally. Which is a huge part of why they've taken over the whole industry just like more accurate SLRs took over from rangefinders.

 

[gbroadbridge]

And EVFs are much closer than OVFs are to accurate. So people prefer them generally. Which is a huge part of why they've taken over the whole industry just like more accurate SLRs took over from rangefinders.

They're not

But anyway, my X100VI is a rangefinder with EVF and OVF, and most folks I know use the OVF and leave the EVF turned off. Boom.

 

[Crimeo]

They're not

EVFs are clearly more accurate previews:

• Exposure brightness is shown accurately. In an OVF, it isn't at all, since the OVF does not respond to shutter speed currently set or ISO of your film. So could preview potentially a dozen stops off of what you will see, while the EVF would get it right.
• Final color balance of your film (or in digital, your white balance settings) can be shown accurately, provided film characteristics are included to some extent in the programming. In an OVF, it just isn't and can't be.
• Technically a subset of "color balance", but an EVF can show black and white, whereas an OVF cannot. A color scene is I think we can agree a WILDLY inaccurate preview if you're shooting black and white film, no?

most folks I know use the OVF and leave the EVF turned off.

Even if we presume this anecdote was 100% accurate population wide for sake of argument, that doesn't give a "why," which is the question.

 

[MattKing]

EVFs are clearly more accurate previews:

I fundamentally disagree.
But they do give different results, so I understand why people use them sometimes, and prefer them sometimes.