Just goes to show if you are quick off the mark how you can gain a foothold in a specific marketplace, I was down at BVE in London this week and the only alternative electronic viewfinder on show was the Cineroid, even Panasonic had a Cineroid hooked onto their demo AF101, that kind of tells you something.

CVP had their F3 on show with a Cineroid and CVP are the official Zacuto distributers in the UK so whats going on, simple, Zacuto have been caught out by Cineroid who obviously have the Korean manpower to build Cineroids for a mass market.

John Preston had a few Cineroids for sale and I got the last one, it’s a must for the AF101 and more than a must for the Sony F3…if you want to achieve critical focus. Both Panasonic and Sony have not given enough thought when producing their electronic viewfinders for these cameras, they are poor to say the least.

The one thing that CVP were majoring on was alternative viewfinders for both the AF101 and the F3 so when you get such large players giving you alternative EVFs it’s got to point to one thing…no one is happy with the EVF on either camera. It’s a sad day when you are offered a Hi-Rez Sony viewfinder on a Panasonic camcorder.

Sony and Panasonic would tell us that they are happy with their viewfinders but the sales of the Cineroid alone tell me another story, I would prefer not to “PIMP UP” my new AF101 by having to spend over £500 to get a picture that should have been built into the camera itself.

What about Zacuto when are we going to see their EVF…how long is a piece of string…I have no doubt whatsoever that the Zacuto EVF will be of a very high quality build, have a 2.5x glass diopter use Canon Li-ion batteries and a full size HDMI input but they are not taking orders as of today, you join a long waiting list and to be quite frank I can not wait  that long for a tool that I need today.

The Cineroid is a very capable EVF, has a very sharp faithful colour image, they have changed not only the poor battery contacts but made it a lot easier to remove the battery and the cover, three things I picked up on when reviewing the Cineroid EVF…so well done Cineroid and lets hope Zacuto can offer the UK market an EVF sooner rather than later.

UPDATE : I have as of today tried the Cineroid with the 7-14mm f4 Lumix lens, now I don’t care what Barry Green says about the Panasonic VF you can”t see critical focus on the AF101 using the 7-14mm lens as it stands, this was clear when I have on occasions thought I was in focus only to be disappointed in the edit suite, today I have for the first time seen out of focus images using the 7mm end of the lens which looks fine on the Panasonic EVF/LCD so that not only justifies the Cineroid’s cost but takes out any anxiety from future productions using this wonderful WA lens.