A tale of two LCDs

All that rumination over view finders has just reminded me of my observations of the viewing screens on my EOS 40D and LX3, DSLR and pocket camera respectively.

On the latter, it is the be-all and end-all of framing. And shooting info. And the ever-so-useful live histogram. I thought I'd get annoyed by the inherently shorter battery life but I'm not, in actual fact. That's because i take less photos with it. Not in that I picture less scenes but the at-the-moment shooting information means I don't take a pile of multiples. This greatly reduces the number of shots I need. In most cases I want large DoF and it has that in spades, thus less fiddling & bracketing of aperture & focus. battery life of 150-200 shots is OK for a day's shooting in the hills, although I might case load of batteries for long trips in the wilds.

On the former, the screen has 2 main uses: chimping exposure between shots (which I keep to a minimum) and the oh so lovely Live View for tripod work. In this case it enables better shots: finer focus, greater DoF control. (I'm still not convinced by the metering on the live histogram but will test in due course.) This is leading to me taking more shots, picturing more scenes because I can get the critical focus and framing I want. Sort of like a mini large format camera (if that isn't an oxymoron). But the battery life stinks. Canon really need to get onto that. Slumping from 950 shots to 150 is a nightmare. Suddenly a single battery is good for half a day rather than 2 or 3.