Next, it was time to let the Nikon out of the bag. I quickly set it up, as I cursed out the light that was beginning to fade already and tried to manually focus. Dusk was upon me and I was not prepared for the frustration that was to follow. I tried my best to focus using Nikon's live view. To achieve critical focus I looked for nuances as I slowly turned the focusing ring on the lens. Surprisingly, in the field under this variable lighting, the image seemed to be interpolated as I used higher magnification. It was a mess. I had never experienced this before and wasted so much time playing around with the live view, that I missed the light. I still took a few shots even though I knew they weren't usable just so I would have something to look at. When reviewing these images on the LCD, I noticed they had a green cast and a low contrast look to them. Needless to say, this did nothing for my self-esteem in the field. My solution - Delete.

I tried not to read too much into this. The point is, if you don't use a manual lens or rely on live view for critical focusing, this shortcoming is not really an issue. It's more of an adjustment for those of us accustomed to using this feature. After testing Nikon's live view manual focusing in the field, I quickly came to the conclusion that Canon's implementation worked better for the applications I need. Perhaps because Nikon's depth of field preview is always "live" and there's a lag time from when you make your adjustment to when you actually see the results. For this reason, Nikon's live view at higher magnification appeared pixelated and nailing focus was not easy. However, with the Canon you get to preview depth of field by simply pressing a button. Therefore, the changes appear faster and the nuances necessary for focusing are much easier to see.

Optimized for edge to edge sharpness on both FX and DX-format D-SLRs
DX-format D-SLR angle of view is equivalent to a focal length of 42-450mm in FX/35mm format.