Originally posted by stevebrot I agree, though I would caution that in truly dim conditions live view is essentially unusable due to noise. [...]
Yes, noise does become an issue. But I've made shots where I basically half-guessed the framing because the LCD is just so dim, and then a few pixels kinda light-up from the focus peaking and - wham! - nice in-focus shot. Of course, high magnification macro is a numbers game anyway: one accepts that the DoF is so thin, the creature can and does move, you're never perfectly still, and so on, so it's a given that you just get very few keepers. It's just annoying when the camera makes it even harder than it needs to be. It took me a while to figure out this was happening - I just kept thinking, "is it just me or is the K-3 LCD dimmer than the K-01?" until I figured out that this was the cause.
Originally posted by Stone G. I agree - and I appreciate that feature.
But don't you already have the eV bar that tells you if the shot will be under- or over-exposed?
In any case, for macro and in dim conditions, you do
not want to be shooting with a pre-closed aperture. That is precisely the advantage in using, say, a 100mm macro plus a strong diopter rather than a reversed lens on tubes (at equivalent magnification). You're then focusing with a wide-open aperture, and can just see a whole lot better. If I'm shooting in tons of light, then I'm more likely to shoot with a reversed lens, where the aperture is preset. But when shooting under a thick canopy, in a dark forest, I can achieve focus with a regular lens plus diopter under conditions where using a reversed lens would just be hopeless (without some kind of continuous focus-assist light).
And at any rate, when you're using manual flash, there's no way the camera can preview the exposure. The LCD dimming in that case is
really just a bug, IMHO...