The Best EVF Digital Cameras - Electronic Viewfinder Buying Guide | Expert photography blogs, tip, techniques, camera reviews

Whether they have built-in long-range zoom lenses or interchangeable lenses, the Electronic Viewfinder camera category (sometimes referred to as “bridge” cameras) has undergone a resurgence in the last year.

EVF cameras are getting more sophisticated, with either longer zoom ranges or interchangeable lenses. Fast burst rates, special effects such as 3-D, sweep panorama stitching, and in-camera dynamic range boosts, multiple-exposure tricks and more have been loaded onto these compact cameras, bringing new excitement and interest. The category has also divided, falling into two major groups:

Superzooms

Where a couple of years ago an 18x zoom lens was considered a long stretch, now EVF cameras with built-in lenses have 30, 40 or even 50x optical zooms, and the lenses start out at wider wide-angle settings. Maximum focal lengths in the 800mm range (35mm equivalent) are not uncommon. There’s even a camera now that can zoom beyond 1,000mm! To accommodate such a wide optical range, superzoom EVF cameras use small sensors, the kind you’d find in a pocket-sized compact digital camera. In daylight that’s fine, but in subdued light, image quality degrades fast because of the physical limitations that come with squeezing so many pixels onto a space the size of your pinkie nail. Despite these limitations, noise suppression software can be applied in-camera which will let you produce 5×7 and even 8×10 prints that will be acceptable for most casual shooters. A caveat when shooting with a long-range zoom camera: Image stabilization will help in bright sunlight when zoomed to the longest focal length, but a tripod is much better and highly recommended.

Interchangeable Lens EVFs

The new sub-category is interchangeable-lens EVFs, which started when Panasonic introduced the G1, based on the Four Thirds sensor, in 2008, heralding a new era for photographers. In the last year, the category expanded greatly, with Sony and Fuji, and Olympus offering cameras with larger APS sensors. In both cases, the sensors in these cameras are commonly found on DSLRs, and the overall image quality is inevitably going to be much better than on smaller sensor cameras. But more importantly, each brand has a selection of interchangeable lenses, and third-party manufacturers have created adaptors that let you mix and match, putting other brand lenses on these cameras. Although these cameras look like DSLRs, they are smaller and lighter because they do not have a space-eating mirror housing.

But wait—there’s more!

There’s another sub-category, mirrorless interchangeable lens compacts which lack built-in electronic viewfinders. Just to confuse matters a bit more, some of those cameras have EVFs available as accessories that are available at an additional cost. I’m not including those cameras here, but you can read more about them in “The Best System Compact Cameras Right Now”.

A note about DxOMark Lab Tests: The Adorama Learning Center’s partner test lab, DxOMark, has published lab test results of some interchangeable lens cameras, but not for fixed-lens EVFs. I’ve included basic result information and a brief interpretive statement for each camera where lab tests are supplied.And now, on to the cameras. First, we’ll look at EVFs with built-in lenses, then interchangeable-lens EVFs. Adorama prices are accurate as of March 14, 2013.

Fixed Lens Superzoom “Bridge” Cameras with Electronic Viewfinders

Canon PowerShot SX50 HS

Adorama Price: $429

With a category-leading 50x optical zoom lens that reaches all the way from 24-1200mm (35mm equivalent, and no, that’s not a typo), the Canon PowerShot SX50 has a 12MP CMOS sensor and is capable of capturing both RAW and JPEG images, as well as HD video up to 1080p with stereo sound. The camera has a maximum ISO of 6400, and the 2.8-inch LCD monitor can flip out and has a 461k dot resolution. The camera also has an eye-level electronic viewfinder with a modest 202k dot resolution that is decent for compositional reference. It offers the usual boatload of photo effects, and has a burst mode of 2.2 shots per second, which is pretty good. In Macro AF mode, it will focus to the surface of the lens (in other words, 0 inches!), another impressive bit of optical wondermint.