On Fri, Jul 22, 2005 at 11:18:07AM -0400, P. J. Alling wrote: > Kostas Kavoussanakis wrote: > > Not true, the viewfinder is irrelevant to auto focus. The camera > doesn't use the viewfinder for focusing, you do. Viewfinders are only > for aiming and composition in AF, that's why it's brighter, (though the > LX with a modern screen is also brighter and is very good for > focusing). Their importance in focusing is minimized. There is no > technical reason why a viewfinder needs to be smaller, the reason for > that is cost. (Well sensor size has something to do with it as well but > still cost rules).
There's no cost saving in making the viefinder image smaller (unless you go really cheap, and substitute a pentamirror, in which case the smaller image size compensates for the additional light losses). The reason viewfinder images got smaller is because there was a lot of additional information being displayed as well as the image. To get all that stuff inside a comfortable viewing angle something had to give. Increasing the viewing angle wasn't an option; having to move your eye around to see all the viewfinder information is a pain.
