I nearly always use live view to focus my MF lenses and then close it and fire in the normal way. How many of you actually take the shot while Live View is in operation and do you think there is any advantage seeing as the mirror is locked up during exposure? Obviously I`m talking non moving subjects like landscapes.
Also, if you use exposure simulation, focus and then stop down without turning live view off and back on again do you find the exposure OK. From what I can gather the camera meters just before taking the image so the simulation doesn`t effect the actual shot?
I use live-view 90% of the time to manual focus and I don't have problems getting the right exposure (I have a 5D MkII). There's also the advantage that, since the mirror is already up, the shot will not suffer from mirror-slap movement (like shooting with mirror lock-up).
I use LV too quite often (say, 80% of the time), as I have an XSi sometimes I miss the focus when at f/1.2 due to its tiny viewfinder (the only real drawback of this camera IMO).
I use it for still stuff, while I use the viewfinder for things/people in motion. So in a dark Norwegian winter I think I use it about 40 percent. I do find the exposure/metering to be less trustworthy when using LV than viewfinder, dont know why.
Almost 100% liveview (and tripod), and I take the shot with LV in operation. Most of the time I'm bracketing so the mirror stays up and the 3 shots are just taken in succession.
ovredal73 wrote:
I use it for still stuff, while I use the viewfinder for things/people in motion. So in a dark Norwegian winter I think I use it about 40 percent. I do find the exposure/metering to be less trustworthy when using LV than viewfinder, dont know why.
Is that maybe because the light is entering through the viewfinder when your eye is not against it?
What made me ask is that although I use live view all the time to focus as I said i usually turn it off to shoot. The other day my wife and I were walking a local forest, I took a few images of her (tripod mounted) and she wanted a couple of shots of me, she wasn`t tall enough to see through the view finder without lowering the tripod so I just set up live view and told her to frame up on the lcd which she did and took some shots. The images were very sharp.
When I used the 1ds and 1ds2 bodies (no LV) I used to close the finder shutter after composing the photo to prevent this (once again, almost 100% on a tripod).
If my E-30's on the tripod, I'm using LV, I don't use LV much handheld with the E-30 due to shutter lag issues. The G1 of course is 98% LV use (the other 2% is AF hipshots) but the *IstDS is 0% LV but it doesn't get used much.
I probably don't use it often enough. I use it for tripod work and macro's sometimes. I have an angle finder that I like to use, but I got some great shots with LV that would have been very difficult even with the angle finder.
dave chilvers wrote:
Yeh! but unless I`m mistaken, the metering is done the viewfinder side of the focus screen which makes it subject to light entering
Also, the seal dividing the viewfinder from the sensor area is not perfect. It will actually allow some light to leak in. This is why the nicer camera bodies, like the D700, have a mechanical blind that you can close over the eyepiece for long exposures.
dave chilvers wrote:
Yeh! but unless I`m mistaken, the metering is done the viewfinder side of the focus screen which makes it subject to light entering
When in liveview, the camera uses the sensor for metering like P&S digicams.
Oh, and I also use live view quite often when shooting with my old lenses. It's difficult with moving subjects, due to the induced shutter lag, but I can much more clearly see what is in focus in the first place.
I used to unabashedly trash live view whenever the topic came up. But its virtues are slowly making themselves clear to me. Hmm. Maybe someday I'll respect EVFs too! Hmm, nahhh!
