I’m now at the point where I’m very comfortable with the T4i in terms of street shooting. I will make one observation about using Live View for focusing. Although there are three different modes, you have to be pretty lucky to use live view for street shooting. By street shooting I mean that you want to focus quickly on a subject, lock focus and wait a second for the person to hit there spot. I’m not talking about hyper-focus, which is possible. But you simply can’t use the LCD and Live View for fast shooting. Each of the three modes has their fault and I’ve gone back to shooting with the viewfinder most of the time.
Now for carefully setup shots, which I also enjoy doing, focusing with Live View is fine. But if you are going to use it a lot, make sure to have an extra battery.
The other advantage of using the viewfinder besides focusing, is that there is no lag between shots. I don’t mean focusing – but the lag between shots is minimal compared to Live View lag.
I’ll give you a couple of examples of how I use Live View. If I’m going to do an overhead shot, or a low-angle shot, I’ll use the viewfinder first to get focus; then flip off the switch on the lens so focus is locked; and then turn live view and hold it over my head (as an example) and not have to worry about focusing in live view.
The same goes for some sort of careful scenic shot. I’ll focus first with the viewfinder, lock focus, and then experiment with composition on the Live View screen.
One other bit of advise. If I’m shooting HDR (3-shots) I will always shoot through the viewfinder. The reason: there’s almost always something in the image that’s going to move a bit, often it’s just leaves in a tree, plus I usually hand hold the shots. So you want the three shots (generally) to fire off as quickly as possible. And that’s what you’ll get with the viewfinder. Also, you can hold the camera much steadier with the camera pressed against your forehead unless you are have the camera on a tripod or something steady. I suspect that the real purpose for the Live View screen is for movies.
Now another big selling point is the fact that the Live View Screen is a touch screen and you can fire the shutter, and even pick focus, by touching the screen. In other words, there’s an entire second menu for operating the camera. For me, one menu is enough. I’m sure the time will come when the entire menu will move to the screen – but that’s going to be for a younger generation. My fingers know where the buttons are, and I can change modes, and pretty much do whatever I need to without having to look at the buttons. In other words – the touch screen means you’ve got to look at it and I like to prepare shots and modes etc. without having to look at the camera.
The single best feature of the swivel screen is that you can twist it in such a way that the screen is safely facing the camera, i.e. it’s well protected from scratches.
Garbage Pail in the Garbage
Example of handheld HDR (viewfinder) with Canon EOS T4i. Just a regular garbage pail that was on the sidewalk to be picked up by sanitation.
Very beautiful.
Though, I have to honestly say, that you didn’t “stay in the lines” in the painting of the lower-left flower, really bugs me, and detracts from the whole image, almost ruining it… and it’s just that one flower, all the rest are lovely and painstakingly painted and lovely… but, then looks like you just half-assed and quickly slopped some paint on that last flower and called it good.
It really is a lovely and beautiful image though. One man’s garbage…
JPH – I didn’t paint the flowers or any of the the picture.
This is a shot of a painting someone did on a a garbage pail! It’s confusing because I don’t show the contours of the garbage pail. But whatever flaws or beauty there are – this pail was sitting on top of a heap of garbage waiting to be picked up by sanitation. I simply ran it through NIK Color Effex Pro Contrast.
DB
Oh my gosh! My apologies! :-) I would have been a trash picker and taken it for myself to use… After I cleaned up that one flower :-)