Photography: SLR viewfinders

[virtuamike]

Originally posted by: Staples
The S3 is a very nice camera and I saw it at amazon for $359. From what I have seen, it takes great pictures and the lens on it is pretty good for an all purpose lens. If I knew what I did today and I didn't have the Rebel and a lot of other expensive addons for it, I probably would really consider it.

Ah but you wouldn't have the benefit of a bigger sensor, an actual optical viewfinder, higher quality lenses, or responsiveness and control. Despite whatever flaws you see in your Rebel, there are inherent advantages of going with a DSLR over a P&S.

 

[yhelothar]

Originally posted by: Staples
The S3 is a very nice camera and I saw it at amazon for $359. From what I have seen, it takes great pictures and the lens on it is pretty good for an all purpose lens. If I knew what I did today and I didn't have the Rebel and a lot of other expensive addons for it, I probably would really consider it.

S3 is not really comparable to a DSLR. The dynamic range is much smaller than a DSLR.
here are some samples of the fuji S6000
You could immediately notice that the highlights are easily blown out and the colors just don't look too good.
At $390, $30 more than the $359, you can possibly get a Pentax *istDL.

 

[LordMaul]

Interesting that you should mention this.

My old boss bought a Canon EOS Mark II and loved it, but I - while controlling almost every aspect of post-production - noticed some weirdness about his "exact" framing of some pictures. He would tell me that photo###.raw was composed perfectly, and to do a straight print in such-and-such of size that would print the exact picture. But I noticed that he had some strangely uneven pictures, even when he thought them to be perfect.

After some testing with some cardboard with actual sizes drawn on it and centered in the viewfinder and so on, we came upon the fact that even this ~$4000 camera body did NOT have a perfect viewfinder, something he wasn't surprised at but I'm still not impressed. No matter how it was set up, you always got a few extra percent in the picture.

Maybe this will help you in your quest to deal with imperfections. Even the top of the line isn't perfect, so unless its a big problem with Canons, I don't know how you're going to get around it.

 

[s0ssos]

so, as people have mentioned, there's the fact your camera doesn't have 100% coverage (the one with 100% that is affordable is the olympus e1, which is a pro-level camera. as noted before, canon 5d isn't, and doesn't have 100% coverage. nor does nikon d200). but there's also the magnification factor, and the actual brightness of the viewfinder, which i think is determined by whether or not the light gets to the viewfinder through a mirror or prism, and how well those are made.
but just go to a store that has them all and try it out

 

[keeleysam]

Originally posted by: Staples

Originally posted by: dug777
rebelXt=350D?

And yes, it is known at the Rebel XT in the US and the 350D in other territories.

And don't forget the Kiss in Japan!