10 Megapixel DSLR group test: screen and menus

The Canon EOS 400D / XTi, Nikon D80 and Sony A100 all feature the same size 2.5in colour screens with 230K pixels and wide viewing angles, but the big difference between them is how they’re actually used in practice.

The Canon and Sony both use their main colour screens for displaying shooting information like exposure and shots remaining, while the Nikon D80 employs a traditional secondary black and white LCD screen for these details. Each approach has its pros and cons.

The 2.5in TFT screens have high resolutions and sheer size, not to mention colour capabilities at their disposal, allowing a vast amount of information to be shown. The Canon and Sony both exploit this by always showing details including ISO sensitivity which on other cameras, such as the D80, require a button to be pressed first.

Sony’s also gone one step further by allowing you to reformat the key details in larger fonts at a press of a button, while automatically flipping the information by 90 degrees when the camera’s turned to portrait aspect, so it’s always upright – see out video tour for a demonstration. Both the Canon and Sony additionally employ sensors under their viewfinders which detect when you’re composing a shot and automatically switch the screens off.

So far so good, but under very bright sunlight, these colour screens can become harder to view, and that’s where the D80’s traditional second screen comes into its own. It may not support colour graphics or the same level of detail, but you can easily read it under bright conditions. We’d strongly advise anyone considering the Canon and Sony to try them outside a shop first to see how easily their screens can be read in daylight.

One quick note on image playback: the Canon and Nikon can both show RGB histograms during playback, whereas the Sony A100 is restricted to brightness histograms only. It’s not a huge point, but RGB histograms are handy for spotting whether clipping is occurring on all channels, or just one - see above. To see each camera's screen and menu systems in action, check out our video tour.