Last year I replaced my five year old Pentax K10D with the new Pentax K5. There were several reasons for the upgrade: the K10D was (in digital camera terms) aging, the K5 offered many technological advances over the five year old K10D, and the K5 was reputed to have class leading high ISO performance. The K5 has certainly lived up to my expectations.
Live-view was a feature that I did not expect to have much use for. I prefer an optical viewfinder and the viewfinder on the K5 is excellent, but there is one situation where I find live-view extremely helpful. With the camera on a tripod, particularly with close-up work, live-view eliminates the awkward contortions and tripod bumping required to get the eye to the viewfinder. And better yet, the image on the screen can be enlarged so that it becomes easy to accurately place the focus exactly where you wish.
I am not saying that the shots in this "Seasons Past" series could not have been made using the optical viewfinder, but live-view certainly made it much easier. Live-view is a feature that I never expected to use when I bought the K5 and though ninety-five percent of my pictures are still made through the optical viewfinder, live-view is a feature that I would not want to be without.
Like you I grew up with a 35mm viewfinder and have only that on my Nikon dslr, wearing glasses makes it a little tricky but there is only live view on my LX3 and I find with tripod work and shooting in general I like the larger view, an articulating screen would be nice. I like these compositions.
ReplyDeleteI have a Nikon P7000 and, like you, I enjoy working with the large screen. And I think an articulated screen would be great--in fact, I am thinking of upgrading the P7000 to the newer P7700 that has an articulated screen but no optical viewfinder. The main reason I bought the P7000 in the first place is that it has a optical viewfinder for those times when the sun makes the screen difficult or impossible to see, but I seldom use it and think I could do without it.
DeleteI have tried live view on the K5 handheld, but holding the larger and heavier DSLR out in front of me seems unworkably awkward not to mention very unsteady. But it's the bees knees on a tripod.