S.R. from St. Louis sent me this recent question -- he is an amateur film shooter considering a Canon DSLR purchase.

Question: "With the Rebel Xti, can I shoot a picture by composing/viewing the image using the LCD display, or do I always have to use the view finder to shoot and the LCD is only for review and to view the settings?"

Answer:
The Rebel Xti does NOT have "live-view" (LCD screen shooting) -- you have to compose via the viewfinder. The 40D on the other hand DOES have live-view shooting capabilities.

The thing to realize about live-view is that you have to manually focus as the auto-focus doesn't work with Canon's live-view shooting mode. You can pre-focus using the shutter or back-button (the 40D has a focus button on the back of the camera…an improvement over previous Canon high-end consumer models that only allowed you to back-button focus via the * button and a custom pre-set -- the 40D designers went ahead and added this as a separate button) and THEN activate live-view.

While I love the new 40D, I personally am not super jazzed about live-view shooting -- about the only time I've used it is when I want to take someone's picture before they think I'm going to take it -- in other words…at family gatherings during dull moments. :)

Perhaps when I get more time to shoot nature / macro detail shots, I'll find more use for live-view shooting.