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Old June 16th 07, 10:39 PM posted to rec.photo.digital.point+shoot
Jer
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Posts: 364
Default Trouble seeing LCD display in sunshine, any suggestions ?

MartinS wrote:
Whiskers wrote:

On 2007-06-15, wrote:
I am having considerable difficulty seeing the LCD displayon the back
of my Sony in bright sunshine. I am having to take multiple shots at
varying angles guessing that my subject is nicely framed or not cut
off, and still I wind up losing the shot I wanted to take because I
couldn't properly see what the display is showing. The viewfinder is
next to useless for me as well. I am wondering if anyone here has
experienced and solved a similar problem. I am thinking of perhaps
some kind of polarizing tape or film I can put over the LCD that will
help me see it better.

I have been known to improvise a sort of eye-level 'viewing hood'
using a cheap 2" slide viewer; remove the part that holds the slide
(some models have that part easily removable) and use the magnifier
and rest of the gadget to let you view the screen almost like a
traditional view-finder, with most of the glare from sunlight
eliminated. Something along the same lines but made of stiff
cardboard and a small magnifying glass might be neater; experiment
) (My inspiration was the viewing hood of a roll-film twin-lens
reflex camera).

There are a few 'hoods' on the market, which claim to make the LCD
screen easier to use, but I'm not convinced by them and I haven't seen
one with a magnifier built in.

This problem is one that compact digicam makers need to address; it
annoys everyone I know who has ever tried to use such a camera in
broad daylight. An optical viewfinder should help, but on those few
compacts so equipped that I've tried, the optical viewfinder is very
small and not very accurate - and of course you still can't see any of
the 'menus' or other information on the LCD.


My wife bought me an original Canon ZR camcorder 8 or 9 years ago. It
came with a clip-on hood with adjustable magnifying eyepiece to convert
the LCD screen into an optical viewfinder. Very useful it was too in
bright sunlight. Unfortunately the camera no longer works reliably, and
I recently bought a ZR700 at a fifth of the price ($400 vs $2000).

It would be nice if P&S camera manufacturers provided such a feature.



They could, but if they did the product wouldn't be cheap enough for
enough people to buy enough of them to make enough money on the first
10K production units. Considering the cheapness of a significant
portion of the P&S market, producing a better product doesn't translate
to making money. Hence, most P&S products are considered disposable by
the manufacturer, and the consumer will eventually agree when they see a
repair estimate for their broken LCD hood, rendering the product almost
as useless as it already is. IOW, it's a marketing snake that eats it's
own tail.

--
jer
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