I think you're getting yourself very confused. Viewfinder magnification has absolutely nothing to do with sensor size.
There's no such thing as a "life sized" viewfinder, because you're still just looking at an image projected on a small (24mm x 16mm or 36 x 24mm) screen. 100% magnification just means that the angle that the image in the viewfinder subtends at the eye is the same angle that the real object subtends at the eye; if you look through the camera viewfinder, then suddenly remove the camera so that you're looking at the real object, you'll see no aparent change in size. Put an MX and a *ist-D up, side by side, one to each eye (you'll have to do that with the cameras in portrait position), each with a 50mm lens fitted, and objects seen through the two viewfinders *will* appear to be the same size (and will appear just a little smaller than you would see with the naked eye). It's just that the MX will crop to one rectangualr portion of the total field of view, while the *ist-D will crop to a somewhat smaller one. Most viewfinders, in fact, try to present their image at an apparent distance of around 1m from the eye. So if you imagine a wall about 1m in front of you the MX viewfinder (with a 50mm lens) is just about like looking through a rectangular 30" x 20" window in that wall, while the *ist-D viewfinder (with the same 50mm lens) is like looking through a 20" x 13.3" window. But in each case the objects, as seen through those windows, are the same apparent size. On Mon, Jun 26, 2006 at 04:22:49PM -0400, graywolf wrote: > People keep saying silly things like that. Optical magnification is not > he same thing as viewfinder magnification. 100% viewfinder magnification > means the image in the viewfinder appears life sized. To get that a > sub-frame camera needs far higher optical magnification than a > full-frame camera. To match an MX's 95% viewfinder magnification your > ist-D needs 1.5x more optical magnification, it does not have it. > > If my Oly had the same optical magnification as an MX the image would be > 1/5 the size. You could hardly call that 95% viewfinder magnification. > > -- > graywolf > http://www.graywolfphoto.com > http://webpages.charter.net/graywolf > "Idiot Proof" <==> "Expert Proof" > ----------------------------------- > > > John Francis wrote: > > > Depends on the camera. The magnification of the *ist-D viewfinder > > is the same as that of my MX, and it appears equally bright (just > > cropped to a smaller image area, of course). > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > PDML@pdml.net > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
