Afewimages: Black and white fine art photography

Everyone knows that Nikon’s engineers must have had a big blackout when they developed the liveview option in their professional camera range. I believe that it is solved with the newest models but on my D700 it has this curious flaw.

I use liveview a lot for precise sharpening on a tripod. At Nikon they must have believed that this is not where liveview is intended for. In liveview mode you want of course also a ‘silent mirror’ because that is why you are using it for. An as sharp as possible image. But that is not possible. Liveview and Mup (mirror up) are two independent features on the D700 and can not be used at the same time. So you have to use a workaround. This is how i do it: in liveview mode i focus. I zoom in on the subject as much as possible. Sometimes that is 100%, sometimes less. Then i quit liveview (press the menu button) en change the dial to mup. Of course be sure not to shake the camera doing this, try to do this as gentle as possible. Then i make the picture, using a remote cable of course.

But is it really so imortant NOT to shoot in liveview mode? Does it make a difference? I did a test with my Carl Zeiss f2/100mm. Distance to the subject was always about 2 meters. Of course i used a solid tripod. The results are evident, or…? Anyway at f5.6 you can see easily a difference. Watch closely the images of the text and nozzle check. But with all images i took at f2 the differences are much more difficult to notice. When you check carefully you can see a tiny more sharpness by using the mup function. Maybe flare (always present at f1.2/1.4/2 lenses) is the cause of not seeing it well. Also, notice the green and purple color fringing in the unsharp parts of the book image. A typical characteristic of non-apochromatic lenses. The flower image really is not sharp at all, because it moved a bit in the wind. I have include it for ‘presentation’ purposes.