Now this is the first time that I’ve experienced Live View. And it is very promising. Not for street photography, but okay, first of all, it gives you a beautiful bright LCD view, with two grids to choose from. I’ve been shooting in the house, with one light on at 3200. Auto focus in live mode works but is slow. It is much easier to press the magnify button and focus manually.
The next thing – it is not quiet in live mode (as I thought it would be). I think on some cameras it is – but not on this one. Nevertheless, it’s not the type of setup that I’d use for street shooting. Well maybe. I turn the LCD so that it shows the image in B&W, and lie in bed pointing at various objects in the house, and looking at this beautiful image on the LCD.
You can turn Live View on with one dedicated button (so long as you’ve turned it on in the function settings).
At any rate – as I say – I need these extras sometimes to get me going.
Fun!
Next up, let’s play with the movie mode. When I get a new camera, I find it relaxing to lie in bed with a good movie playing in the background and read through the manual. Every page. I’m sure most photographers never crack open the manual, but I enjoy it. And I almost always discover some tidbit that I didn’t know existed. As I’ve said, these things are computers and they bring out that “what does this thing do” curiosity which comes from the programmer part of the brain.
For example, when I was using the 5D and had the ‘*’ button set to focus lock, I couldn’t figure out how to have the exposure change as the camera shifted to a new subject. But this was straightforward with the 500D (that’s what I’m going to call this guy). There’s another thing I haven’t seen before and don’t fully understand labeled D+ which says it will alter the illumination for the scene. Again, not sure how this works yet, or whether it effects what’s recorded in the RAW file… but I’ll find out.
And then there’s a way of calibrating / registering the lens so that the camera / computer will make changes to correct for lens falloff in the corners.
I’ve finished all my “real work” for the day, and tomorrow I’ll get to go out and do a walkabout with the new camera. I’ll stick the infrared camera in the bag as well. It’s a nice system.
Canon 500d at 3200 ASA (with a touch of noise removal)
Not that it matters, but I did I took this shot in Live View. Quite interesting as it reminds me of shooting with the old view camera, maybe because of the pronounced grid and the fact that the LCD is much better than the viewfinder. Manual focus. I suspect it will be useful to static subjects. Frankly, using the NR program of your choice, it seems quite feasible at 3200 ASA. That surprised me, and maybe it’s helped by the fact that it’s black and white, and if you apply some film grain — well – as I say, has a nice look.
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Canon 500d at 3200 with a touch of film grain
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Oh, one other tidbit. I’ve been using Pro Zoom 3 from Benvista.com for interpolation. Well it’s the PC version, and I guess I could switch to PC mode but it would mean installing the PC version of Photoshop to use it, which I don’t want to do. So I dropped a note to BenVista to find out if I could upgrade from the PC version to the Mac version for their upgrade price of $99, rather than having to buy the first time users copy at $200. Haven’t heard back from them yet. Is there a way for Mac Photoshop to use a plugin that’s for the PC (yes I have Parallels).
hmmm… I just put something called comment luv in the blog. What’s supposed to happen is as you type, it will go to your site and pull back some info.
.-= dave´s last blog ..Live View (500D) =-.
“The sun is down and the moon is in the meadow / The world keeps turning, the world keeps turning” (Tom Waits)
What an amazing composition, Dave. It has such a strong Egglestone feel in black & white. And this minimalistic beauty sure tells a hundred stories. Great photograph!
All the best & safe travels, Fritsch.
.-= Fritsch´s last blog ..the record will stop, the record will go =-.
Dave – I’m curious, on the 500D in live view I read that you can hold down the depth of field preview button and you can see the results on the LCD screen as you rotate through the apertures. What wasn’t completely clear via the DPR review was whether the LCD screen applied an auto gain feature whereby it would brighten the screen as you stopped down. I find the DOF preview via the screen a potentially extremely useful feature if the LCD has enough resolution to be able to convey the changes in realtime. I believe the 500D also has a zoom feature in the preview mode which would allow you to zoom in to check focus more critically – combine this with DOF preview and you would have a way to precisely determine the band of in focus area within a shot. I wonder if all this works in practice.
Ty – there is no “auto-gain” as you rotate through the apertures with the DOF button pressed. Frankly, I don’t think it’s something I’d use that often. However, manual focus is extremely easy and precise with two levels of zoom in. I doubt if it’s something you’d be able to do with a moving object, but if you were on a tripod, or even hand held and taking a shot of something static (which I’ve done several times already) you can get an absolute focus on the tiniest of things in the frame.
You have to remember that in practice, the DOF button is fairly small, and again, I doubt if it was something I’d use except maybe in a very static situation on a tripod.
(I still haven’t tried movie mode btw).
But the camera has a very interesting mix of features for someone like myself that jumps all over the place. If I am in the mood to carefully compose a shot, a la view or mf world, I can use the live view with two choices for grids, and see a helluva lot more than I can see through the viewfinder.
And if I’m in the street shooting mood, I can easily hold the camera with one hand, and pre-focus, or not pre-focus, and spin around on the street like a top firing off pictures.
BTW – when I was shooting the ceiling fan in live mode last night, I thought I was at 1600 ASA and looked at it the next day, and ran it through a Noise Reduction program, and was very happy with the results. This morning I noticed that it was 3200 ASA, not 1600 ASA.
The menu system is better than on the 450 – having a quick get to what you want button – which is very useful, and in fact the entire menu system is better than what you get on the 5D, not to mention how much better the LCD is (top notch quality).
As far as movie making goes, I can’t really imagine how it would work since you can’t “pull focus” while you’re shooting. You’ll also need a “fast” sd card.
Of course I didn’t get it to make movies with, but I think there will be times when I’ll still get some use out of it.
My favorite line in the manual so far, to paraphrase: If you leave live view on for too long the camera will get hot and can burn your skin. But it won’t harm the camera.
I’ve read the same line in most of the live-view Canon’s I’ve looked at; but so far, I haven’t felt the camera heat up.
There are still several features I haven’t had a chance to futz with.
Dave,
The D+ means that your highlight tone priority is active.
It works just like it did on the 40D.
Nice choice of a street camera.
Steve
What noise reduction software do you use mate?
Bwian.
.-= Bwian´s last blog ..More from “Little Italy” =-.
The ceiling fan has a very film noir quality to it. I’m waiting for the pan down to Bogie lighting a cigarette over a dead body.
.-= Lester´s last blog ..Mystery of Times Square Terrorism =-.
Okay, well, now you’ve made me want to look at this guy. I would never have thought that a Canon at that price point would be something I’d like, but . . .
.-= Chris Klug´s last blog ..What’s Old is New =-.