Shooting with Rear LCD?

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Ovacheerdad

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So I picked up an R6Mii recently. I used to shoot with a 60D but it was never sports, just family and landscapes so this is a whole different animal. This weekend was the first real time out with it. I know I want the 70-200 2.8 and the 24-105 2.8 just not sure which to get first. So I rented the 70-200 for my daughter's cheer comp this weekend since I'm not as close to the stage. Well it got canceled this weekend due to snow, but I did end up being able to go to a middle school basketball game and shoot some pictures. After watching 2 other full time photographers at this game im trying to figure out how they shoot the way they do. I know camera's that one guy shoots with are both r6miis and he mainly uses the rf 24-105. The guy never used the viewfinder the whole game. Always held the camera low and used the back screen. He posted some of the photos to his page today and they are perfect.

Does anyone else shoot like that? How do you keep focus like that? Are you always holding down the focus button while taking pictures?
 
Ovacheerdad said:
Does anyone else shoot like that? How do you keep focus like that? Are you always holding down the focus button while taking pictures?
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I will use the tilted LCD for low pictures... If I lay on the ground for long it's painful (spine issues).

When photographing action you should almost always use continuous autofocus, and keep it active the whole time. Some use "back button focus" for this, but I was never a big fan.
 
Ovacheerdad said:
Does anyone else shoot like that?
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Me; but it might be for a completely different reason...
Ovacheerdad said:
The guy never used the viewfinder the whole game. Always held the camera low and used the back screen. He posted some of the photos to his page today and they are perfect.
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I'm curious: was any of those guys bespectacled? Because if any of them was, then they might be in a situation similar to me.

I have myopia and astigmatism; I wear glasses with different correction for each eye. As you might guess, using viewfinder peephole is a chore, because I have to maintain a distance between my eyes and the viewfinder: too close and it'd collide with my glasses (leaving stains; or worse, scratches), or too far and I would no longer see the entire FOV. I would also need to make sure that my head was completely still relative to the camera (I usually can't) or the view would bobble, which was really annoying.

Sure, some people have suggested that I take off my glasses while shooting; but it means I got to have somewhere I could keep my glasses in without staining it (I usually don't; and when I do, it's always hassle to store it away and put it back on repeatedly on the move), and I couldn't easily see "the big picture" outside of the frame while I was shooting, which is a situation I dread.

And speaking of diopter wheel: I don't feel comfortable using only a single eye for an extended time; so back at the time when I hadn't completely given up with the viewfinder, I would often change which eye I would use with it. Result was, predictably, I had to fiddle with diopter wheel all the time because I need different compensation for each eye.

Also, I just mentioned that I have astigmatism: which means the viewfinder's diopter wheel could never fully compensate for my eyesight, so my glasses-less view of viewfinder is always blurred despite my best effort in tuning it. The last time I seriously shot anything using viewfinder, was back in my film camera days; when I was still a kid, coincidentally, the time before I had to wear glasses-- for reasons that are obvious by now.

I always feel more comfortable and more productive with shooting digital via LCD for a very long time; and after I found out the exact reason why diopter compensation never worked satisfactorily for me, I just switched off my viewfinder and pretty much never turn it back on again.
Ovacheerdad said:
How do you keep focus like that?
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For sports/action shots, I think people just do what @sk66 suggested no matter that the viewfinder/EVF or LCD was used: enable continuous autofocus.

I don't really shoot these categories of scene much, and I mostly manual-focus things with my Sony Alpha-65 (unless it was the most casual/info-gathering shot); so what I mainly rely on is rather the camera's focus magnifier function, which is a button that toggle (1) digital maximally-zoomed-in view which the LCD/EVF pixel correspond 1:1 to the captured pixel at the arbitrary location of the image-- center by power-on default, but I could use arrow buttons to shift the location (and it remembers the location until I power it off again).

What's annoying about this function on this specific camera though: is it couldn't be activated at the same time with the built-in digital teleconverter. (2) I mainly shoot on prime lens, so I use the latter function a lot; and when I activated the teleconverter to frame the scene, then activate the magnifier to focus... that would cancel the teleconverter and I had to re-activate that again before pressing the shutter. (3)


(1) Actually, in this camera, it cycles through deactivated, midpoint-zoomed-in, and maximally-zoomed-in.

(2) Basically digital zoom, but in fixed value of either square-rooted-2 factor, or factor 2.

(3) Sometimes I would cut the chase by using the teleconverter button to deactivate the magnifier, which works okay if I was intending to use a square-rooted-2 factor digital teleconverter. (If I was intending to use factor-2, that would still be another button press away, and another chance to defocus when shot handheld)
 
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I often use the back screen particularly for people but also for scenic pictures for the perspective. Sometimes when you're shooting at standing eye level it's obvious in the result and I often prefer a camera held at a lower level perspective.
 
sk66 said:
I will use the tilted LCD for low pictures... If I lay on the ground for long it's painful (spine issues).

When photographing action you should almost always use continuous autofocus, and keep it active the whole time. Some use "back button focus" for this, but I was never a big fan.
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but back button focus was advantageous when you wanted to lock the focus point independently of the shutter release and then potentially recompose. With eye detect doing the independent focusing role on many of the mirrorless cameras and improving as the software and Ai is refined the advantage that the whole BBF gave is diminishing.
I suspect many advocates of BBF might not have made the reslisation
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
What you need is a nice big screen taped to your camera. One of these, perhaps... ;)

View attachment 475151
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Whats the refresh lag? I assume that there will be a comms channel lag between what the lens sees, then hows thats digitally interpreted for the EVF, but even more so if it then has to be relayed down a cable to a tablet. Camera monitors will reduce this as they're designed to connect via the HDMI port but i suspect data transfers through a USBc port would be slower?
 
I will often use the LCD screen. I just find it easier, in some respects. It's very good for shooting anything close to the ground. But I also find it more stable than holding the camera to your eye. Because if you're going to shake that's when it will occur.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
It was a joke! (shakes head, wanders off muttering to himself)
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maybe this is The joke, because tethering is very real in the higher steps of the food chain

jamesev said:
Whats the refresh lag? I assume that there will be a comms channel lag between what the lens sees, then hows thats digitally interpreted for the EVF, but even more so if it then has to be relayed down a cable to a tablet. Camera monitors will reduce this as they're designed to connect via the HDMI port but i suspect data transfers through a USBc port would be slower?
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You are more likely to rely on external screens for review of a taken image, then re-adjust and re-do as needed.
Everything I've looked at is slow and has some sort of secondary sting whether it is reduction of battery life, saving images to external device only, disabling internal LCD (hdmi cable!) and very low live view resolutions. The japansese camera makers don't seem to get the UI of 21st century still; all they have to do is copy dji RC2 and some smartphone tech. It is already there.

Out of all native accessible cameras, the lowly nikon ZR is the only one with LCD above 2000s 3"... Maybe in 2027 we will see more mainstream models evolve in this way. I don't really care if they add more megapickles than already found in the likes of R5, nor iso 25600000 or whatever.
 
I use the EVF on my Zf almost all the time unless the angle of the shot precludes it. It has a nice soft rubber cover so I don't worry about my glasses getting scratched or marked.

I tend to treat it more like a film camera, turning the screen around so no image is seen. If I was shooting action like sports I might do more checking of the image otherwise I don't do a lot of that.

On the subject of BBF, I am using FBF on the Zf. The button normally associated with White Balance works for me as the focus button. I did use BBF on the Olympus though.
 
I use the LCD probably 95% of the time. Might just be my eyes failing, but I find I can get a better sense of the composition/framing when I use the screen.
 
I shoot mostly with the rear screen, and sometimes with the viewfinder. They both have pros and cons, I like how the viewfinder puts me into the scene, all I can see is my image, I also like how I get to keep my spatial awareness when I’m using the rear screen, important for if I need to see what’s going on around me for working around others or just to predict action. I switch between them seamlessly
 
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