The dual-eye viewfinder eliminates the need to squint.
The reflected light is invisible to the eye but not to the onboard camera, which displays the images in a single-eye viewfinder in stark monochrome.
Over all, digital cameras that offer screens in lieu of optical, or "eye level," viewfinders represented 26.8percentt of sales of digital point-and-shoot cameras during the first quarter of 2006, compared with 9.4percentt in 2005, the NPD Group says.
The eyepiece must fit snugly around the eye while the viewfinder is in use, and the finder must be closed completely while it is not in use.
With his eye to the viewfinder, he would face north, say, while his lens pointed west, and the view west was what he saw.
Mr. Stock was himself the subject of a memorable portrait, by Andreas Feininger, in which he held a camera to his spotlighted face so that the lens appeared to be his right eye and the viewfinder his left eye.
In an effort to keep that kind of quality but make the camera smaller, Panasonic and Olympus decided to remove the mirror box — the mirror-prism contraption that, in regular S.L.R.'s, bends the light from the lens into your eye at the viewfinder.
Images are also processed and previewed rapidly at 120ms, which is less time than it takes to move an eye from the viewfinder to the screen.
The 2.5-inch color LCD screen is almost twice as big as the one on the old model and can turn off automatically when you put your eye to the viewfinder.
Being able to adjust the shutter down a couple steps without removing your eye from the viewfinder is an example of something that might be difficult with a touchscreen.
Live View mode, now with contrast AF, Face Detection, and optional histogram, grid, and bright/dark area display, allows you to quickly compose your images without having your eye against the viewfinder.
