Reading the popphoto review of the Oly E-1, I was suprised, that it was stated, that the E-1 should have the lowest viewfinder magnification they ever testet.
Looking at the good overview about the D-SLR's at http://www.photozone.de/2Equipment/digitalSLR.htm a very good magnification for the E-1 of 0.96 was stated. The average magnification of analog SLR's is between 0.7 and 0.8. The viewfinder magnifications which are on the photozone side give a wrong impression, they can not be compared among each other. The croping factor has to be taken into account. Now I have calculated the comparable magnification in a way that I multiplied the magnification bei the CCD width divided bei 36. Example: Oly E-1 0.96*17.3/36=0.46 This is far smaller than for analog SLR's. I have done that with all cameras and have listed them below: FULL FRAME: Kodak DCS-14n___0,80 Canon 1Ds_______0,72 APS-SIZE: Pentax *istD_____0,62 Canon 1D_______0,57 Canon 10D______0,55 Nikon D2h_______0,55 Nikon D1x/D1h___0,52 Nikon D100_____0,52 Fuji S2 Pro______0,51 Canon 300D_____0,50 Olympus E-1_____0,46 Sigma SD9______0,44 And now the surprise: apart from the full-frame DSLR's, the smallest camera, the Pentax *istD has the biggest viewfinder magnification. It is not far away from anolog cameras magnifications. Canons are 10% smaller, Nikons are 15% smaller and the Oly and Sigma are more than 25% smaller. It seems that the Pentax is realy designed from scratch as a DSLR. The Nikon D100 comes from the F80, the Sigma SD9 from the SA9, that is the reason for the the low viewfinder magnification. Olympus, which stated that the E-1 is specifically developed as a DSLR gives only a dissapointing result.
