Viewfinder magnification

[MatH]

I noticed that diferent D-SLRs have diferent viewfinder magnification (Rebel XT 80%, *Ist DS 95%). It is obvious that more is better, but what I don't know is what this number really means? Is it in any way corelated with sensor size (biger sensor = biger viewfinder)?

[erichlund]

It's not really magnification. It's coverage. For instance, if it says 95%, then you see in the viewfinder 95% of what the camera actually sees in the frame. That means, when you snap the picture, the photo will have about 5% more stuff around the edges that you did not see.

Cheers,
Eric

[MatH]

I made a mistake in my post when I typed (Rebel XT 80%, *Ist DS 95%). I should've written (Rebel XT 0,8 *Ist DS 0,95).Some people might've thought that i was talking about coverage, but I wasn't. Coverage and magnification are two different things describing viewfinder.

[Balrog]

Viewfinder magnification is how large things appear in your camera's viewfinder .. 1.0x magnification is when objects in the viewfinder appear exactly life-size with a 50mm lens on the camera.

[D70FAN]

Viewfinder magnification is how large things appear in your camera's viewfinder .. 1.0x magnification is when objects in the viewfinder appear exactly life-size with a 50mm lens on the camera.

I didn't know that a servant of Melkor would know such things...

[jeisner]

I noticed that diferent D-SLRs have diferent viewfinder magnification (Rebel XT 80%, *Ist DS 95%). It is obvious that more is better, but what I don't know is what this number really means? Is it in any way corelated with sensor size (biger sensor = biger viewfinder)?

If you can get into a store that has both cameras on the shelf, go in and ask to have a look at both and try them out and see the difference for yourself, it is very noticable IMO....

Also remember you have to divide the magnification by the crop factor so you are comparing on an even playing field, not doing this is an annoying little marketing trick as you are not comparing apples with apples...

For example, even though the the E300 has 1.0x coverage and the ist DS has 0.95x coverage, after dividing by the crop factors to compare them on an even playing field the DS actually has 0.63x coverage and the E300 has 0.5x coverage... Again you can try the cameras side by side in a store to confirm this, when you do you will notice that the DS obviously has a larger viewfinder...

[erichlund]

OK, I guess I didn't know that they published a magnification, or just didn't look at that. But I'm not sure I understand this last bit. If the coverage is listed as 95%, that's what you should see, 95% of what the sensor sees. But if the magnification is 80%, then the image will look 20% smaller than you would expect to see looking through a normal lens, which means it would be harder to see detail and therefore harder to focus, but you would still see 95% of what the sensor sees.

At least, that's what makes sense to me.

Cheers,
Eric