beside the improved live view sharpness which is a big advantage for those who shoot manual focus lenses there is another feature that is really exciting - especially for landscape photographers that shoot tilt-shift lenses and look for maximum sharpness by tilting their lens: split screen live view!!!
Split screen allows to select 2 different points of the frame in live view and display them magnified side by side in live view.
To better understand what I mean take a short look here: forward to 13:40 min #t=13m46s" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Split Screen Live View Demo
As you can see with the new D810 it is possible to select a focus point in the foreground and one in the background and display them in split screen live view.
This is absolutely fantastic to maximize sharpness with tilt in the manual focussing process as you see the impact on sharpness in the foreground and background at the same time.
Killer feature!
Now comes the big drawback:
The two focus points have to be on the same horizontal line as you can see it in the video.
If you shoot in portrait orientation this works perfect as one focus point can be positioned to the foreground and one can be selected in the background of the scene.
If you shoot in landscape orientation it does not work as you can only move both focus points aligned on the horizontal line up and down. It is not possible to flip the line to vertical.
I hope you understand what I mean.
This feature of flipping the split screen focus points from horizontal to vertical alignment should be fairly easy to program in the firmware.
The point is that Nikon needs to be aware of that. Myself I do not know why they implemented in the way it is now.
What I am asking you now is if you see a value in this feature and would send a mail or call your Nikon Professional Service about this.
NPS is the preferred way to request improved functionality as they will contact R&D in Japan.
I have already called NPS in Germany and they told me that they were already discussing about the split screen and forwarded the request to Japan.
If other countries do the same I believe that it will be likely that Nikon works on this incredible feature for the next firmware update.
I would highly appreciate if you take some time and support me by contacting NPS.
Achim, may you comment about the brightness of live view in backlit conditions and in low light conditions, that was a major issue with live view for many of us.
pookipichu wrote:
Achim, may you comment about the brightness of live view in backlit conditions and in low light conditions, that was a major issue with live view for many of us.
Achim, is there still the lag in updating the screen in LV while adjusting focus manually?
Is it still interpolating every other line and just applying lots of sharpening like the workaround you can do with D800(e) where you just put the picture control for sharpening on max which does not affect RAW output?
I did read your post, I was referring to a specific aspect i.e. backlit conditions where the brightness and contrast is an issue, I'm not concerned about color noise just whether I can see the image, which is an issue using live view outdoors. Sorry if I wasn't clear, I know you said low level LV has not been improved but I wanted to make sure there was no improvement in the specific conditions I'm asking about.
