Forgot to mention:
The A350 has a tiltable screen. this may sound trivial, but when I was
shooting one day, I came across some red deer behind a fence, with tiny
holes. If I had the A350, I could have reached up and still see what I was
about to shoot. Also it came in handy for car shots from down low.

Many thanks to Focus and Jazu
Tony

I agree to a certain extent.  For me, normally speaking, if you can use a
decent view finder as opposed to the LCD, then use it.  Of course, unless
you are privileged to be using a 100% view finder, you need to judge it
slightly for perfect in-camera cropping.  Personally, for my photos a 100%
view finder would be more beneficial than live view, but horses for courses.

There are however some advantages of using live view, for example if you
need the camera so high or low that you can't easily use the view finder
(maybe you want to shoot from the ground pointing up or shoot above a crowd
of people standing in front of you).  Also, particularly useful when DOF is
absolutely critical.  When using big aperture lenses, what you see through
the view finder in not always correct and can show more in-focus through the
view finder than it actually is.  In this situation, then it would be more
beneficial to use the live view function and I expect many macro
photographers would benefit from this.  I rarely shoot macro, or have the
camera in a position where I am unable to use the view finder, so not an
important feature for me, but there are some users that will find in
indispensible.

"jazu" <nofreakingspam@nospam.com> wrote in news:Q7IVj.131495$rd2.104287
@pd7urf3no:

Bollocks. Liveview really helps when I am shooting in very dark scenes.

It would be if it was the only way of seeing the image. But AFAIK it's
always (in DSLRS) supplied as a switchable option. There when you want
it, and having no effect at all when you don't. Best of both worlds.

I've found live-view to be useless for ordinary shooting.  The only good
use I've had for it is for critical manual focus for macro tripod
shooting, where you can zoom in to 10x view.  There is a slight lag
(delay) with the D300 in this mode.  Focus accuracy has much more
precision than using the viewfinder.  I guess it might in theory be
useful for landscape shooting using the same method, but IMO it's not
worth the bother.
Some versions of liveview using a separate image feed taken from an
image of the viewfinder screen would not be as useful for critical
focus, but might be okay for use of the camera "point and shoot style".
 That's not viable IMO when camera and lens combination are well over 1kg.

As others have pointed out, contrast detect AF is near useless.  Nikon's
system of dropping the mirror and using the camera main phase-detect AF
works well (part from slight delay while this happens), but again IMO is
not much use in practice - I've yet to find a situation where that would
be less hassle than just using the camera normally.

J?rgen Exner <jurgenex@hotmail.com> wrote:
f> "tony" <tony@norsey.demon.co.uk> wrote:

You seem to be thinking of a compact camera in which the live view is
the only option. AFAIK in DSLRs it's offered as an option which you
can switch off when not needed. I'm not sure what you mean by
"additional" LCD. Are you perhaps thinking of those cameras which have
both a live view LCD and an EVF? AFAIK in those models the extra
battery drain of running two screens doesn't arise because they don't
run both at once. You switch manually between them, and in some case
can also select autoswitching (when the eye comes up to the
viewfinder).

Steadiness of hand under load is an area where there is huge variation
between people, and huge variation between in how it is affected by
age. I was under the impression that it was easier for me to hold a
heavy camera steady away from my face than a light one. I was walking
around yesterday happily composing shots in my LCD rather than
viewfinder with a rather heavy version of my camera. So out of
curiosity I weighed it. 2lb 15oz. I then checked its steadineiness
when held 18 inches away from my face with one hand. Bit of an effort,
but at least just as steady at the same zoom as I can hold my small
cig packet sized digicam with one hand, possibly slightly steadier.

When shooting close to the ground you can often get your elbows on the
ground for added steadiness. I also note that sometimes when trying to
get a very steady shot with the camera jammed up to my eye, I get a
slight blood pressure pulse movement in the image. When that happens I
can get a steadier shot by moving the camera away from my face.

However, I do have much steadier hands than most. I developed steady
arm's length holding skills through pistol shooting practice fifty
years ago, and I haven't yet lost too much of them through age :-)