Canon EOS 300D Digital RebelCanon knocks the bottom out of the Digital SLR market, with an amazingly affordable, full-featured model!<<Design :(Previous) | (Next): Optics>> Page 4:ViewfinderReview First Posted: 09/04/2003 |
Viewfinder
Virtually
identical in design to the 10D's viewfinder, the 300D's optical viewfinder is
again excellent, providing a wealth of information and great accuracy. (The
only elements missing relative to the 10D's finder are those corresponding to
features not included in the Digital Rebel - Separate flash exposure compensation
and a circle showing the center-weighted exposure metering area.) Instead of
the pentaprism viewfinder used on the 10D, the 300D's viewfinder has what Canon
calls a "pentamirror" design. (Mirror-based viewfinders trade off
viewfinder brightness in favor of considerably reduced expense and weight.)
Because the 300D features seven AF points, the viewfinder shows seven focus
point boxes arrayed in a cross pattern. When one of the points is selected by
the AF system, a bright red dot indicates it in the display. (This differs from
the 10D's setup a little, in that the 10D actually illuminated the chosen box.
Personally, I somewhat prefer the 300D's approach - While the bright red dots
are a bit more visually distracting, they're also much more visible in bright
shooting conditions.) 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. The viewfinder
display conveys a lot of information about exposure and camera status, as shown
in the illustration below. (Courtesy Canon USA, Inc.)
For those readers new to digital SLRs, it's important to note in discussing the 300D's viewfinder system 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 the camera's light sensitivity and viewfinder brightness), 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,
ISO speed, auto rotate status, auto power off time, 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 300D does an excellent job
of keeping you informed of its status and settings.
Here's what all the numbers and indicators in the information display mean:
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