There has been a trend in camcorder design lately to eliminate the traditional viewfinder in favor of the LCD panel (such as the Canon HFS-100). And in my opinion it’s good riddance.

I’m going to probably break with most of my professional camera op brethren here, but I’ve become a complete convert to operating the camcorder using the LCD screen. I rarely bother to squint into the viewfinder anymore and these are the reasons:

I wear glasses. I know that all viewfinders have a diopter control that will compensate for my less than stellar vision, but it’s annoying to have to raise my glasses up and down constantly to check both the camera and the real life set.

Having one eye closed all the time is annoying, and takes a while to re-compensate to the real world environment. When seconds count, being able to take your head out from behind the camera and being aware of your surroundings makes it much more likely you will be able to capture what’s about to happen, rather than what’s in frame right now.

The resolutions of viewfinder screens are generally awful. In the SD days, you could still focus reliably using the viewfinder. But with today’s HD resolutions you still have to use all the focusing tools such as peaking and image magnification in order to get an acceptable focus. So what’s the point? Why not use the much larger, and (more likely higher resolution) LCD panel?

I haven’t seen a really good viewfinder since they were mini tube tv’s anyway. Film cameras are totally different, looking through the viewfinder to a nice piece of ground glass, is amazingly sharp and detailed. Looking through a plastic tube into a tiny LCD panel is just disappointing.

I know that the biggest obstacle is shooting outdoors in bright light, and that the LCD panel gets washed out very easy on a bright day. But they are getting better in this regard, some cameras such as Sony’s EX-1 actually use the sunlight, and optically direct it behind the screen to increase brightness.

That’s still the only drawback I can find, and one that’s easily worked around simply by shading the screen with your hand in most cases.

So what about you, so you still find viewfinders useful?