D700 live view

<p>I have been trying out live view to focus using a Nikkor 85mm PC lens. The lens is the older version not, unfortunately, the newer PCE lens with auto stop down. Found an instruction video that suggested view at "100%" and this seems to be the way to go for accurate focus. Initially I want to use it to check the depth of field in a macro shot. However, the D700 does not indicate, unless I have missed it completely, the percentage of zoom in the view. Can anyone suggest how many times depressing the + button would be equivalent to 100%?</p>

<p>Any advice from anyone who has experience of this lens would be appreciated.</p>

<p>You're over-thinking it. Just zoom in as far as you can, so long as you can still see contrast at the edges you want to focus on.</p>

I don't know the specifics of the D700 but on the D5100, when manually focussing a static subject, I go in as far as I can and sometimes even use a magnifying glass to view the lcd, while at max mag.

When reviewing shots I press the magnify view button 5 times, out of the possible 8. If it's well-focussed the image will be clear, if very well exposed and focussed, I can push the button one more time. Eight mags is at pixel level, so I assume 7 is 200% and 6 is 100%.

If it's as sharp as you can get it, it's as sharp as you can get it, no matter what the %age. On my GX1 the screen unhelpfully reads "X2", "X4", which doesn't actually give me much info.

<p>I'm not with my camera and can't check, but the D700 (and most Nikons) just replicates pixels when you get past 100% - there's no smoothed attempt to reconstruct the image. Therefore you should be able to see once you get past 100% because you'll start seeing pixel blocks. It's not necessarily a bad thing to be fully zoomed in - you're getting a smaller view, but the larger blocked pixels mean it's clearer to see pixel-level sharpness.</p>

<p>The D700 (I guess you mean REview here, since the D700 doesn't have LIVE view) produces a basic quality JPG at below 100% resolution. If you go down to 100% magnification and then back off one step, you are looking at the image 1:1. It is a basic quality JPG, so you will see some JPG artifacts in there. But it will give you a perfectly usable indication of focus. </p>

<p>The D700 has a live view function.<br>

It is ok to use for checking the focus, to see where the sharpest focus is. As you are able to incline the focus plane, it is not easy to estimate how it behaves.<br>

However, it may be cumbersome to check the depth of field. For checking the dof you have to scroll the zoomed point around the frame and then try to remember how unsharp the previous reference point was when comparing to the current one. I can not do that.<br>

In some models - maybe D700 too - it is so that one "-" from the maximum magnification gets you to the 100%. But as Mark says, do not over think.</p>

<p>"..since the D700 doesn't have LIVE view" - Wha!? Luke, of course the D700 has Live View, otherwise why would the OP and all the other respondents be talking about it? Or maybe you thought that the [LV] setting on the lefthand mode wheel stood for 'Luncheon Vouchers'?</p>

<p>Frank, as Andrew and others have said, the maximum zoom on the D700 is called 100%, which I believe shows the image pixels mapped 1:1 on the rear LCD screen of the camera. But whether it does or not really doesn't matter, because you want the maximum zoom for accurate Live View focusing.<br /> If you must count clicks, six presses on the (+) button gets you there, or you can simply hold the button down until it stops zooming in.</p>

<p>You can also position the zoomed-in section anywhere you like within the frame by using the 'joystick' control to place the red rectangle where you want to focus. The red rectangle nearly fills the frame at maximum zoom, but you can still steer the zoomed section around the frame with the joystick control.</p>

<p>Depth of field is quite difficult to judge by fully zoomed LV, since the image is magnified considerably, and in any case D-o-F depends on how large you print or how close you scrutinise the final image among other things. I'd just experiment with the amount of LV magnification that seems to work for you. So maybe viewing 1/4 or 1/8th of the frame would be about right?<br>

BTW, depending on light conditions, the lens may not fully stop down to the selected aperture in Live View preview, making DoF even more difficult to judge.</p>

<p>My mistake! I must be getting old. For some reason I thought I remembered that live view came in on the D3s/D3x, but not with the D3/D700. I had all those cameras, so I should have known better. After a couple hours sleep, I remember now shooting a series of paintings with the D3 using live view. One thing I did remember well was that the live view was not 1:1 at 100%. The largest /real/ magnification level was one zoom level back from that. </p>

<p>Luke: You're confusing it with video, which did come in with the D3s and D90 but not the D3/D700. I specifically waited for the D700/5D2 generation to have live view for tilt/shift lenses, since the original 5D lacked it.<br />

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RJ: The issue, I believe, is that the D700's live view (like most Nikons) goes "past" 100% - there's a stage where each pixel on the screen is an image pixel, and then a further magnification stage where each image pixel is shown as a square on the screen (though it's not interpolated, so the squares are clear and sharp pixel edges stay sharp). However, it's usually obvious when this has happened, and it's still valuable for seeing more easily when an area is in focus. Going in fully and then zooming out until pixels stop looking like squares will get you to exactly 100%. [Edit: And I've completely ignored that Luke just said that. Please forgive my incoherence while I go and get some sleep.]<br />

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As for the "having to pan around" problem, I agree. That's why I suggested to Nikon, shortly after getting my D700, a live view mode with the screen divided into quarters that can be panned and zoomed separately, so you could position quadrants in different positions in the focal plane and have a quadrant left over (three points define a plane) to show the whole image for composition. It's still on my "things to hack into the D800 BIOS if I ever get the chance for that kind of programming project" list, since Nikon don't seem to have got around to it.</p>

<p>Thanks for all the replies folks extremely helpful as always.</p>

<p>Now to make time for implementing your ideas.</p>

<p>Kind regards, Frank</p>