Currently on a project doing before & after shots of eyelash extensions for a beauty studio, the Canon Live View really came into bat here, and it was at this point I then realised how incredibly worthwhile having this feature is on a D-SLR for certain studio shots.
I had never done before & after shots before. The front & side shots were easy but the angled shots are the tricky ones to reproduce a second time.
So here’s what I did;
I brought up the original shot on my laptop. Using the EOS Utility I started remote shooting. This is like live view, but the live view is now on your PC/Laptop screen instead.
I then positioned the camera more/less at the same points as I had marked out previously with the before shots, but now I was able to ask the model to look at the laptop screen and basically match her current position with the position that was previously taken. This was VERY quick, and accurate. Without Live View I would’ve had to direct the model myself which can get tedious and frustrating for both. The models actually found this a little more interactive and fun, which allowed them to be more cooperative.
After finalising the pose on camera, I get them to ‘lock it in’. I then switch off live view on the laptop, go back to my camera and check the focus. If the focusing point landed on the specific portion of the eye I wanted to capture, great! If not, I would’ve had to readjust the camera so that one of the AF points is trained on the specific part I wanted to focus on, which would then throw off the alignment of the after shot a little.
With Live View however, all I did was enable Live View on the camera, zoom into the area I wanted to focus on the camera itself, then using manual focusing. Being a 10mpx camera, the zoomed in live image was crystal clear and I was simply amazed how much better I could focus using manual focus on a zoomed up image and what subtle differences it made instead of using auto focus, or even manual focus through the viewfinder!
Just amazing! Tv & Av was constant so that was not a problem, fired a pre-flash exposure lock, took the shot and done!
I’m no professional and there are probably better ways to do this but for me, this workflow worked a treat and was very quick, all because of the added benefit of Live View!
I have to say though, toward the end of the session I placed the back of my hand on the LCD screen and I could feel the surface was noticeably warmer. Now this could either be the actual CMOS warming up during extensive use of LiveView, or it could be the actual LCD warming up during extensive use of LiveView, i’d be more inclined (and hope) that it’s the latter… ?
It didn’t help the fact that I was shooting in a very small room with 3 warm studio ceiling mounted lamps, maybe that also contributed? Dont’ know.
One thing is certain, I am now a convinced ‘Live View’ shooter for certain photographic applications.
UPDATE: 14-Mar-2008
Was doing some LIVE View studio shooting on the weekend and a niffty little trick I forgot to mention is when you have the camera connected to your laptop via USB and the LIVE view is switched on both the camera & the laptop, and you zoom into the LIVE view image on the camera, this automatically gets zoomed in on the laptop too. It’s quite responsive, no lag – 30fps. It’s a great feature!
