Live View and Image Playback

Having begun shooting in the days of film, I must admit that I have had this long established process of capturing images and  reviewing them after they were in my computer, whether it was a workstation or laptop; kind of the same process as with film. In my just completed trip to Arizona, I was committed to using live view; the Canon terminology for viewing the image ,"before" taking the picture. With Live View, one is able to "see" the effects of a persons's f/stop on depth of field without the darkening that one gets with the depth-of-field preview button. This motivation is the consequence of using Canon's tilt-shift lens in the shift position and wanting to maximize my depth-of-field in the images shot.I must admit, this is a truly wonderful feature which I regret not having used earlier. With Live View, not only can one zoom in and check to make sure the elements are in focus between the close items and the distant items, but one can watch the changes is one increases or decreases their f/stop of adjusts the lens' focus setting. It is not to be understated how valuable this feature is when working with a tilt shift lens and challenging terrain.Another feature that I used on this trip is the image playback function. A lot more digital cameras come with this function and I am equally embarrassed that I have not used this feature more often.  Since I like to work in low light situations, Live View will not work in these situations unless one cranks up the ISO setting. With image playback and Magnification View one can check the image just shot to determine ones focus settings and make sure the elements desired are in focus. What is important about his feature on the Canon 5D Mark II is that one can zoom in just as close as is allowed in Live View, in both cases 10x magnification. Since the LCD monitor on a Canon 5D Mark II and on almost all current digital SLR's, are larger than the viewing screen, one can get a good determination of the accuracy of the focus on close and distant items.As you can see, I have included sections of the instruction manuals for the Canon 5D Mark II and the Phase One + backs. Using the image playback, magnification review, is the difference between knowing one got the shot they were trying to get versus going home and finding out they missed it because the image was out of focus.