EVF

Glossary Terms

Electronic viewfinder mounted on accessory shoe of Leica D-Lux 5 image by fotograf@flickr (Image rights)

EVF is an abbreviation for Electronic View Finder. In a digital camera which lacks an optical viewfinder, a live video image from the image sensor may be streamed to a small monitor display with an ocular, typically as an alternative to a larger back LCD display.

Early EVFs were prone to many faults, such as poor resolution, slow refresh rates, and smearing of the image. However the technology of EVFs is advancing rapidly; many users find a 1.4 million dot display (found in the Olympus VF-2 or the Fujifilm FinePix X100) to be a viable replacement for an optical SLR viewfinder. In 2011 Sony introduced OLED modules for EVFs offering 2.3 million dots.