Alan C. wrote: > The MZ-S was good enough for me, if and only if, it had a higher > magnification viewfinder. Okay, Pentax did choose to produce the multicoated > glass eyepiece again (what I have been waiting for), but then they took away > another important element.
Alan, I agree. The most important feature of a small camera to me is the viewfinder. It is an unfortunate reality in today's market that only large, heavy, expensive cameras have large, bright, full-coverage or near-full-coverage viewfinders. Small cameras have small, low-coverage viewfinders in which the optical image seldom "snaps" enough to enable comfortable manual focusing. The one exception that I know of is the Contax Aria, which is a small, mid-priced manual-focus camera with motor wind and rewind and autoload. It has a finder like they used to have in the old days: large, beautifully bright, and made of real ground glass so you can actually use it to focus with. One of my favorite cameras on the current market, although I don't own one. I wrote a full review of the Aria for _Photo Techniques_, but I don't remember when it appeared. The Aria also has one really nice and, I think, unique feature: on a 1/3rd-stop scale in the viewfinder, it shows you the difference between the multi-segment metered value and what center-weighted metering would have given you. So you always know what the fancy metering algorithms are actually doing. --Mike - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
