Cale_Kat
When shooting with my new 7d Mk II, I discovered that the shooting direction was displayed with the level on the rear LCD panel. In addition, on this model you can have the level also displayed in the eye level viewfinder which greatly improved my success rate in having a level shot (no more titlted horizons). I also found that from time to time during a 3 week shoot in Central America I would have liked to see the compass direction in the eye level viewfinder - rather than having to take the camera away from my eye to look at the rear LCD.
In one case, in the mountrains I was looking for a specific peak that I knew was NNE of my current location. But, I had no idea which way NNE was. In another case when I was scouting for a shooting location for a star trails shot I wanted to place the north star directly above a specific foreground element. However, I was scouting the location in the day time when stars are not visible. It would have been nice to know the camera was pointed North as I moved around to get the foreground element in the right place relative to where the North Star would be that night. I like to shoot a single shot before dark when there is still light on the landscape, then without moving the camera I wait for total darkenss to get the star trails. In other words I need to get everyting positioned before I can actually see the constellations. I was able to do this with the rear LCD but it would have been a tad easier (and much less battery drain) if I could use the viewfinder to do this.
This is not an earth shattering reuqirement by any stretch of the imagination. And there are cell phone apps that do this as well (e.g. TPE) but in 3rd world countries if you don't have a data plan (or any plan for that matter) or are out of cell tower range the cell phone app is not all that useful. But as the camera already knows this info and they put in the model the ability to show or not show all sorts of other metadata superimposed in the image area of the eye level viewfinder, it should be something that is not all the difficlut for them to do..
