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05-02-2012, 10:32 PM   #46
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QuoteOriginally posted by Laurentiu Cristofor Quote
That is because the SLR LCDs are quite poor. But even so, having just your knees on the ground beats sitting flat on your belly.



Agreed. That's what the LCD screen can save you from.
I don't want to be saved. That's why I have a little throw with me when I shoot outdoors, laugh. I can never get the same results with an LCD putting it on the ground. Maybe you guys can but I can't. I have to be looking through that VF to compose right. That's just how it is. I'm game and most of the time I'll do whatever it takes to get my shot short of close up facing down dangerous wildlife and or having to climb up too far. I'd willingly even do the latter, but I seriously can't. Major heights absolutely paralyze me. I can get up, if I don't look down, but I'm like a scared cat once I get up there too far. I throw up at high altitudes besides. Seriously. I've got this medical thing, affects my ears. (Messes with my eyes too.) Being up high totally gives me vertigo and if I keep on going up it can make me ill like I'm vilely seasick ill. I'll never be able to shoot the Grand Canyon. Statue of Liberty wasn't too bad and I made it to the top of the Empire State Building and the original Twin Towers once, but going up them wasn't pleasant. If I ever get back to NYC I definitely won't be doing the new WTC....

05-02-2012, 11:59 PM   #47
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QuoteOriginally posted by Laurentiu Cristofor Quote
So isn't that the point? To see what kind of image you are able to record? Do you think the viewfinder was made for people to admire views through it? It is simply a tool to frame and focus - and with AF, you just use it to frame and check camera settings while you do it. You can do all that on an LCD and then some.
Hm. "…made for people to admire views through it"—that way of putting it a little incendiary, I think. All I'm saying is that I'd rather see the scene through the lens using optics alone. There are lots of reasons I have for this. I'll lay them out for reference:

I find that the "then some" can be a little distracting. In certain situations, I might be tempted to put a histogram on the screen while I shoot; in others, I might want other information on the screen. This is all stuff I would end up fiddling with instead of shooting. I had this experience when I tried to shoot an event with a friend's micro 4/3rds camera.

LCDs just don't seem high enough quality to rival the sharpness of a viewfinder. Some of them are pretty bad in sunlight, at certain angles, and so on. With a good pentaprism VF, I don't have to worry about that.

I wouldn't be using the LCD to check focus…I haven't used autofocus in years, and I just sold my last autofocus zoom to buy a couple old Pentax-A primes. I don't like that enlarge-to-focus stuff: while I found it quite usable, but the process wasn't fast enough for me: I had to pick the point to zoom in on, focus, zoom out to recompose, hope my subject didn't move. I could imagine using live view this way, but I'd have to get quicker with it.

If live view helps you frame better, that's cool—who cares what I think?

I probably just need to get used to it, but I don't really want to. (;
05-03-2012, 09:16 AM   #48
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QuoteOriginally posted by keyofnight Quote
I find that the "then some" can be a little distracting.
I didn't mean overlays. I can see DOF and overexposed areas better.

QuoteOriginally posted by keyofnight Quote
I don't like that enlarge-to-focus stuff: while I found it quite usable, but the process wasn't fast enough for me: I had to pick the point to zoom in on, focus, zoom out to recompose, hope my subject didn't move.
Yes, if you need speed, focus peaking is the way. But the zoom in/zoom out is actually automatic on Pen cameras (perhaps on others, I don't know) - you zoom in when you adjust the focus, you zoom out when you stop doing that. But only works with native lenses with contacts, not with legacy lenses.

Just some info - I am not trying to convert you.
05-03-2012, 09:19 AM   #49
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QuoteOriginally posted by Laurentiu Cristofor Quote
Yes, if you need speed, focus peaking is the way. But the zoom in/zoom out is actually automatic on Pen cameras (perhaps on others, I don't know) - you zoom in when you adjust the focus, you zoom out when you stop doing that. But only works with native lenses with contacts, not with legacy lenses.
Focus peaking! Now that's a feature I haven't tried out yet, and I need to try it because I hear great things about it. ;D

05-06-2012, 11:07 AM   #50
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QuoteOriginally posted by Laurentiu Cristofor Quote
So isn't that the point? To see what kind of image you are able to record? Do you think the viewfinder was made for people to admire views through it? It is simply a tool to frame and focus - and with AF, you just use it to frame and check camera settings while you do it. You can do all that on an LCD and then some.
Yes, and you can also haul tons of merchandise or debris with, say, a wagon and a tricycle, or you can use a truck. But the question is, can one do the job better? Right now, in virtually every way I care about, a viewfinder is so mich better than an LCD there is no point even even discussing the inconsequential ways that rhe LCD might win (eg, the one or two shots a year it might save me from lying down on the floor). At some point in the future, I don't doint that EVF (not LCD per se) technology will improve to the point that it will be better than an OVF for this purpose. But we're still not really all that close from what I can see.
05-07-2012, 03:31 PM   #51
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QuoteOriginally posted by Marc Sabatella Quote
Yes, and you can also haul tons of merchandise or debris with, say, a wagon and a tricycle, or you can use a truck. But the question is, can one do the job better?
It should be obvious that for me the answer is yes. I used an LCD for manually focusing for the past half year. If I can do it, you can do it too. If you don't want to, that is a different question. This is not an issue of technology not being capable or of people not being able to use it - it is just the classical issue of people avoiding change and preferring to stick to old habits. Psychology, not technology.
05-07-2012, 03:36 PM   #52
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QuoteOriginally posted by magkelly Quote
I'm game and most of the time I'll do whatever it takes to get my shot short of close up facing down dangerous wildlife and or having to climb up too far.
Speaking of which, here is a shot I wouldn't have taken with an OVF:



05-07-2012, 06:34 PM   #53
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QuoteOriginally posted by Laurentiu Cristofor Quote
It should be obvious that for me the answer is yes. I used an LCD for manually focusing for the past half year. If I can do it, you can do it too.
Yes, I *can*, just as I *can* haul geavy gear with a tricycle. But no, there is absolutely no sense in which it is better for me. It's not a question of what I want, but of how it is. When EVF advances to the point where it really does have an advantage over an OVF, I will be happy to switch, but that point just hasn"t arrived yet for me.
05-07-2012, 07:15 PM   #54
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Wouldn't it be nice to have a HUD overlaid onto a focus screen? Think of the possibilities - focus peaking, histogram, clipping warnings .....
05-08-2012, 06:17 AM   #55
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QuoteOriginally posted by Marc Sabatella Quote
Yes, and you can also haul tons of merchandise or debris with, say, a wagon and a tricycle, or you can use a truck. But the question is, can one do the job better?
The tricycle. It costs less, gets to places the truck can't, keeps you in shape, has far less environmental impact and doesn't require you to mortgage your future.

You also travel faster by bike or trike than by truck, if you factor in how long you had to sit at a desk to pay off each piece of hardware (plus licensing, fuel, and insurance).
05-08-2012, 11:54 AM   #56
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QuoteOriginally posted by Marc Sabatella Quote
Yes, I *can*, just as I *can* haul geavy gear with a tricycle. But no, there is absolutely no sense in which it is better for me. It's not a question of what I want, but of how it is. When EVF advances to the point where it really does have an advantage over an OVF, I will be happy to switch, but that point just hasn"t arrived yet for me.
Remember that I am not even talking about an EVF - just about using the LCD.

There are times when an LCD is needed.
There are times when a VF is needed.
There are times when an OVF is needed.

But most of the time (80-90%), either framing/focusing method can do the trick, unless your photography involves corner case scenarios most of the time.
05-08-2012, 04:20 PM   #57
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QuoteOriginally posted by Laurentiu Cristofor Quote
Remember that I am not even talking about an EVF - just about using the LCD.
Yes, but an LCD is absolutey and totally out of the question for me. It is so inherently inferior for my purposes - in ways you know I have already explained elsewhere, so I won't bother repeating them - that I could never consider one. No amount of technical evolution can ever change those enormous inherent disadvantages. I don't care what the resolution of that LCD is, if it is small enligh to fit on the back of a camera I don't mind hand holding and yet I have to hold it at forearms length, it has failed right put of the box for me. An EVF, on the other hand, shows promise, and when the technology matures in a few more years, I can totally see it being superior to an OVF for my purposes.
05-08-2012, 10:07 PM   #58
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QuoteOriginally posted by Marc Sabatella Quote
Yes, but an LCD is absolutey and totally out of the question for me. It is so inherently inferior for my purposes - in ways you know I have already explained elsewhere, so I won't bother repeating them - that I could never consider one.
Yes, but you should not draw general observations from your singular experience. Just because you need to carry a 1-ton boulder as part of your daily work and thus you can never consider a tricycle, it does not mean that tricycles cannot be used by the general populace to carry their regular burden.

Your argument line is interesting. You started by asking whether a tricycle is useful in general for someone and then in your next post you say that for you one is not - but whether a tricycle is competent in general and whether one is appropriate for you are two unrelated issues and this is another goalpost moving type of argument:

QuoteOriginally posted by Marc Sabatella Quote
Yes, and you can also haul tons of merchandise or debris with, say, a wagon and a tricycle, or you can use a truck. But the question is, can one do the job better?
QuoteOriginally posted by Marc Sabatella Quote
But no, there is absolutely no sense in which it is better for me.
I highlighted the generic you and the specific me, to make the change of subject obvious.

I have no argument with the statement "Marc Sabatella does not care about LCD screens" - it is your preference/need. But that is hardly an argument for implying that the answer to "Can an LCD screen do the job better?" is "No" for everyone else (or for a majority, at least).
05-10-2012, 10:32 AM   #59
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QuoteOriginally posted by Laurentiu Cristofor Quote
Yes, but you should not draw general observations from your singular experience.
True, but note I did no such thing. I never said there don't exist people for whom LCD's are acceptable. I thought I was pretty careful to say "for me" at all relevant points. If I missed one, consider it added.

Of course, it is possible to generalize *somewhat*. My statements may also apply to others who often shoot at low shutter speeds and are concerned about carmera stability, who are concerned with not distrubing others in crowded environments, who value seeing the framing at a large size, or who have trouble focusing on objects closer than arms' length. Unless they value some apsect of LCD's enough to counteract those concerns.
05-10-2012, 10:50 AM   #60
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Originally posted by magkelly
I'm game and most of the time I'll do whatever it takes to get my shot short of close up facing down dangerous wildlife and or having to climb up too far.
QuoteOriginally posted by Laurentiu Cristofor Quote
Speaking of which, here is a shot I wouldn't have taken with an OVF:
Except that a garter snake is hardly dangerous wild life, except to perhaps mice and bugs. The last photo of a Garter Snake I took is only half exposed. The other half is inside the mink that was eating it at the time
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