I was going over one of my favorite forums and came across this post about  the usefulness of a digital compact camera viewfinder.

Here are the most important reasons to get a digital compact camera with a viewfinder:

“I often find that in bright light the LCD is too hard to see and a view finder would be better and at night time the LCD is far to bright and shows nothing without enough ambient light.”

Being able to turn of the LCD and use the viewfinder in these situations is perfect. You can always use the LCD afterwards in better lighting conditions to check your photo.

“Even with a large LCD it is pretty hard to see details. That said, with the exception of SLRs, most viewfinders are a compromize – they typically show only 80 – 85% of what is actually captured. But that’s better than guessing with an LCD.”

Honestly, if you want to do more than take a quick snap shot, you’ll need a viewfinder. For example, if you want to take a picture of a bicycle riding by with a blurred background, it’ll be almost impossible to follow the action by moving the camera and taking a photo with the LCD screen.

“I also find optical view finders very helpful because it’s so much easier to steady the camera by bracing it against your face”

Digital cameras with some kind of image stabilizing technology will also help in gettign sharp shots.

“If you need reading glasses to focus on small images you will find it very difficult to determine whether what you see in the monitor is sharp without putting on your readers.”

As you can see, there are several benefits to having a digital compact camera viewfinder.

Unfortunately for us consumers, most manufacturers choose to build compact cameras without viewfinders.

The Powershot SD1200 IS is an exception to this rule. It has both a viewfinder and image stabilization technology on board. Click here to find out more.

Read the whole thread: http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7593_102-0.html?threadID=213243&tag=forum-w;forums06