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 improved 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.