It’s Friday, I’m on the train to Carinthia and here are two images made this morning.
The B&W image is one that I wasn’t able to compose quite as I would have liked it. I would have needed to lie down or at least go very low and use the tiltable electronic viewfinder. But then, the probably best solution would have been a tilt/swivel LCD like on the Canon G12, the Nikon D5100 or the Sony A55, to name just a few.
I’m really curious how Nikon positions this kind of display. It debuted on the D5000, but none of the other cameras in that series had it, neither on the low, nor on the high end. The D5100 has it again, the 3100 and the D7000 don’t. Hmm … can I have that on the D400 please?
Of course it won’t happen. I really ask myself, what does Nikon think? Such a display is tremendously useful and opens a whole class of interesting opportunities. Imagine a macro mounted and the camera positioned on the ground between the grasses and weeds. Can you say jungle?
Or used with a wide-angle (basically what I did here). Shooting from unusual positions is so much easier with a tilt/swivel display.
Apropos Sony A55. I really don’t like the company but sometimes they have a product that deeply impresses me. The A55 is such a product. It has this semi-transparent mirror, that always stays down, even for shooting, and the mirror is not used for the viewfinder but only for phase-detect autofocus. In fact, it has an electronic viewfinder and no optical viewfinder at all, but if you ever see one in a shop, have a look through its viewfinder. It’s gorgeous! It’s easily the best viewfinder that I’ve ever seen, my D300 definitely included. I guess that’s the future. Don’t believe me? Have a look for yourself, but I warn you, it hurts to use your own camera afterwards 🙂
The Song of the Day is “Make Yourself At Home” by Cab Calloway. Hear it on YouTube.