Unsharpness in Canon Powershot G1 viewfinder

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I just bougth a Canon G1. When I pointer the camera at a set of distant trees and looked through the optical view finder I saw a horizontal band of unsharpness (a blurr, like there was some grease on the optics, which after carefull check wasn't there).

This area moves up and down with the dioptry correction lever. It also moves up/down when you move your eye up/down w.r.t. the finder. The effect is slightly larger at the righthand side of the finder than a the left side. It's extends over rougly 10-20% of te field.

It's not in the optical path to the CCD, so it won't affect my photos. Still..... I didn't expect this from a well-known camera manufacturer.

I went back to my supplier, we inspected another G1. It had the same problem.

Has anyone experienced this also ? (e.g. is it by design or just in a short production series) Does other cameras like have the same problem ?

I seems strange to me that this was never mentioned in the dpreview and steve's digicam review.

Regards, Gerard.

-- Gerard Haagh (gh001@signet.nl), July 22, 2001

Answers

With point and shoot cameras the optical finder is usually one of the worst part of the camera. It job really is to give you an educated guess at best on what is going to appear on the film or in your case the sensor. Luckily with digital we now have a preview screen that will give us a more accurate first impression and an exact and instant final image. You might try sending it in for service but it might be one of the quirks that you have to live with.

-- john (dogspleen@juno.com), July 23, 2001.

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