I haven't got a K20D to experiment with but see page 174 in the K20D instruction manual. You can use 4x and 8x magnification for Live View to assist in focusing. Unless the K20D normalizes the brightness of the LCD during Live View, there's no reason to believe that the LCD view will be any brighter than the optical viewfinder in low light, and it will likely be darker.
The Panasonic L1 has 4x and 10x available for magnified focusing assist. I use 10x almost all the time, but when used with a long focal length lens (like the 50-200) I sometimes bump it down to 4x as the magnification is too great: the image becomes too jittery to see clearly through infinitesmally small movements of the camera and lens. The L1 does not normalize display brightness beyond a certain point, however, so it becomes quite dark in dim lighting. I carry a flashlight in my bag for critical focusing in dim circumstances. Thus far, for DSLRs with Live View, having tried personally the Olympus E410, E510, E3, Nikon D300 and D3, the Panasonic L1 and L10 have the best implementation so far. It's very usable and useful on these two bodies. Godfrey On Mar 27, 2008, at 1:06 PM, Timber wrote: > Hi list! > > Today I've joined the K20D owners :D > > First thing I've tried is MF lenses and Live View. My first impression > was: disappointment. > First the zooming in is totally useless. At 4x you can barely see > if the > sharpness is at the right place or not. That was one of my > expectations > from the Live View, to be able to zoom in and see the focus. Second is > low light. I hoped that in low light I will be able to see a bit more > trough live view (even if noisier) but I see even less with Live View > (at f4) than with my eyes. I hope at least the zooming may be > changed in > a later firmware version, because at the moment it's really > disappointing. For a good reference see Panasonic FZ50, where it is > very > useable. So far I know Canon EOS 40D is zooming in normally and not > just > doubling every pixel... > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
