photo credit: Philgarlic

I briefly mentioned finders in my last rant. This has led me to my latest gripe – whatever happened to high-eyepoint viewfinders? Leica and Nikon finders pleasured a whole generation of sweaty, overweight, myopic photographers. You would think with the prevalence of these dim and tiny viewfinders attached to APS-C cameras, someone at Nikon would have though to pull an old F3 HP off the shelf and cram the finder onto a D300s.

Adding insult to injury, the latest crop of full-frame offerings have some of the dimmest and dingiest finders I have seen in years. Their low-magnification does not help either. Now I know why live-view is so popular. Who wants to squint through a cruddy viewfinder for any extended period of time? It is like peering in on your neighbor in the shower through two thick screens and a dirty windowpane.  You want to look but you get frustrated by not being able to make out any of the good stuff.