Flip It or Tilt It: Articulating the Variations of LCD Screens

It was the year 2003, and a feature on my first digital camera changed the way I take pictures. I had purchased a Canon PowerShot G3 digital camera to use on a location scout for a film. I was one of the foolhardy who thought I’d never “go digital” but could not resist giving this model a try, which offered a relatively fast lens, a lot of new features, and actually kinda looked like a “camera.” The model had an optical viewfinder but also a 1.8" LCD screen on the back, which could tilt, twist, and swivel, allowing for accurate image composition without bringing the camera to your eye. Boom!

I started shooting from all angles, primarily from my belly, where the camera rested while hanging from my neck, but also from waist level or from as far as my arm could reach—up, down, and out. The LCD could be placed at an infinite number of angles and while glare could be a problem, not having to put the camera to my eye enabled a kind of freedom and furtive shooting style that reinvigorated my street photography. And while I have not given up DSLRs (I immediately bought the Nikon D750, partly because it was Nikon’s first full-frame DSLR with a tilting LCD) and I still use a camera’s viewfinder, having an articulating LCD is now a must for me.

Nikon D750 DSLR Camera

While it seems that any camera, especially one that takes video, should have the functionality of an articulating screen, many do not, and there are good reasons for that, but it’s not wrong to ask, why don’t they all have the most versatile of possibilities, which to me would be a fully articulating swivel LCD?