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Viewfinder Display Overview

Okay, folks. We're taking our walkthrough of the outside of the camera. And it's time to continue along the way onto the backside. So, we have a lot of controls. The working end of the camera you might say. We have a new high res LCD monitor on the back of the camera. And in case you're wondering how much of a difference that high res makes, if you use one of the Hoodman or Zacuto loops on the back of the camera, on previous cameras, like the 5D Mark III or the DSR Mark II, when you look at the back of the camera through a loop you can count pixels. On this it's virtually impossible to count pixels because they become tighter and smaller in there. Now, we also have a touchscreen so that you can now activate a lot of controls. And we'll talk more about this as we get into the camera. On a side note, I'm not the touch guy. I don't like the touch because I look at the screen and I hate fingerprints on it. And so, I've gotta keep my cleaning cloth out and clean it off a lot. But it is incr...

edibly convenient in a variety of functions of the camera. So, it's not that I don't use the touchscreen, but I do use it. But you get to use it wherever you want. The thing is is that they implement it in this camera in many, many different areas. In playback, in shooting video, in going to the menu, in entering your name into the camera. And so, it is a very valuable feature, and it's great to see that Canon has it finally included on one of their cameras of this level. You're gonna be spending a lot of time with the viewfinder cause that is how you're gonna get the best performance of the camera for most types of photography. Take note that there is a diopter which is a focusing adjustment for the viewfinder in the upper right hand corner. And you wanna look through the viewfinder and look at the line of information down below and make sure that that is sharp and clear to see. And that's the proper setting. Now, it does get bumped from time to time. And so if you think that you're suddenly going wacky in your eyesight, just adjust your diopter and chill out. Cause that's probably the only problem. Now the Eyecup EG is replaceable and removable. It's got that kind of soft rubber that works up nicely against your glasses or against your forehead. Just pinch both sides to release it. They do make a special one that is an anti-fog one. So, if you're a sports photographer or landscape photographer, and you're outside and it gets fogged up, they do have on that's has a special coating on it that resists fogging up. And that sells for about 45 bucks. The standard one is a little less than $ if you do wanna upgrade that eyepiece. Let's talk about what you see in the viewfinder itself. So, the frame that you see in the viewfinder is 100% accurate. So, you are getting exactly what you are looking at in the frame. Next up is our auto focusing points. We're gonna talk more about focusing in a few minutes. But right now, there are 61 focusing points. It's gonna show them to you in the frame. There is a place in the menu system where you can go in and control which points are displayed for you. For some people, they wanna clear out the clutter and they don't wanna see any focusing points at all. You can turn them all off if you want. Or you can leave them all on. And we'll talk more about that as we get into the menu sections with auto focus. There is a spot metering that we talked about before. And there is a little circle in the middle of the area that is 1.3% of the area where it's concentrating it's reading when you are using the spot metering. There is a built in level that helps you determine if you're tilting the camera left, right, up, or down. And this is something that can be turned on or off by diving into the set up menu number two, something called viewfinder display. And then you can go simply turn the checkbox to either see that or not see it. We also have the option to have a grid which is great for architectural, landscape work. Sometimes people just like it for compositional reasons. And this is all thanks to the fact of, I believe it's called the intelligent viewfinder two in this camera, where it allows to have all this LCD information. And a lot of the mirrorless cameras out on the market have ... One of the big selling marks of mirrorless cameras, in my opinions, is the heads up style display right on the viewfinder of what you're looking at. And now Canon as added that into an SLR camera. And so, this stuff is really, really nice. I don't like turning it all on. But there are bits and pieces that I do turn on from time to time depending on what my needs are. Here's one area that really has expanded from the Canon 5D Mark III is the viewfinder information. There is tons of information, I'm not gonna go through every bit of this here, a lot of this are modes that we've already talked about. But there's a number of other settings that you might have turned on or off in the camera, and you wanna know about that. You can see it heads up right there in the display. So, just for instance, when you go into change the drive mode, and you press the drive button on the top of the camera, you will see your drive options come up as you cycle through them. And then when you release the drive button, that goes away unless you specifically have this turned on. So, it'll always turn on when you're changing it. But you can choose whether you wanna have it turned on all the time. Now by default, I don't like this stuff because it is clutter on my composition. And I like to have as clean a viewfinder as possible. But it's nice to be able to have some of this here. Now, one that's a little bit different is the exclamation mark because that can be turned on or off but you can also control what it's warning you about. It's a general warning. For instance, if you have your camera in the black and white mode. You can say turn it on if ever I leave my camera in the black and white mode because that's something really important I want to know about So, we'll talk more about customizing that when we get into the custom functions, page three, Displays in Operations. And so all of these can be turned on or off. So, you can just go click a checkbox that, hey, you know what, I always wanna see what metering system I'm using. You can check that box off. Going into set up number two, viewfinder display, and totally customizing your viewfinder to your personal needs. And then finally, at the bottom is our LED information. And this is the most critical shooting information when you are taking photos. The auto exposure lock button we'll talk about here in a moment. Locking our exposure with the little thumb button on it. There is a number of controls when you have a flash attached and you have various things either turned on or turned off. Or modes set with the flash that lets you know what mode it's in. Then we have our basic exposure information, our shutter speed, our aperture, our exposure level. If we have our camera with exposure compensation turned on. Remember I've warned you about leaving this turned on all the time. This is that little warning. When you see that in there, that means your camera is either overexposing or underexposing everything. And so, you wanna be very careful if that's turned on most of the time. We'll have our ISO setting. And then we're gonna talk more about this highlight tone priority. This is where Canon's software will go in, take an image that you have taken, and start tweaking with the tonalities on it. The brightness, the contrast, and the shadows. And this isn't something that everybody wants but some people do. And that's why there's a little warning. I'll show you some examples in an upcoming section. We have our remaining shots which is the total number of shots left. And then we have our focus confirmation. And the circle indicates that it has achieved the focus. The little arrows below it indicate that it's working. And so, it's kind of the "I'm working here. I'm trying to do it." And then when it gets the circle there, that means it has confirmed the focus. So, that's what you're seeing in the viewfinder itself. With the camera, on the strap, you get this little black piece of rubber. And in case you've wondered what that is for, you need to take off the eyecup EG, and you put this little rubber cover on it. If you are not behind the camera when you are shooting with it in a normal photography mode, not movie mode, not live mode, it blocks light coming in the viewfinder. If you are shooting in aperture value, time value or program, light coming in through the viewfinder may throw off your meter and give you an incorrect exposure. And so, you need to block this off. If you were to, say, mount your camera ... Let's say you were shooting a rocket launch, and you have to mount your camera out in this bright field, and you're gonna leave it in aperture priority but the sun might be coming up right behind it with bright light shining through the viewfinder itself, that could throw off your meter. And so, most people would just put some black gaff tape on it. But if you have your strap there that's what this little rubber piece that is part of it. That's what it's for. All right, working our way around the buttons on the back of the camera. We have our menu button which dives into the, oh I don't know, there's about a 150 different items in here. And we're gonna spend the whole second half of the class exploring what the menu is. And so, we're gonna check this box, and we're gonna come back to this later. Next up, is the info button, and what that does is it brings up information. And as I like to say, nothing and no one is ever hurt by pressing the info button. And so, if you wanna see more or less information, just press the info button repeatedly to cycle through the different options there. One of them is kind of cool. It's the custom quick control screen. And this is where you get to customize exactly what you see and how big it is. And so, this is something Canon has been adding on their last couple of cameras. And it's really nice because, I said from the outset, I love to customize things and tailor them just the way that I want them to be. And so, in the second half of this class, section number three, where we go through the set up menu, I'm gonna go through and I'm gonna show you how to set up a custom control screen and how to get it tailored just the way you want it to. But by pressing the info button, you'll just cycle through these. If you said that camera settings just has information I'm not interested in, you can uncheck that in the info button display options and you won't have to look at that when you cycle through. But start with, I say, turn them all on and see which ones you use and which ones you don't use. All right, this top button is gonna get my award for the least used button on my personal camera. So, this is a short cut to three particular features, picture styles, multiple exposures, and HDR photography. We're gonna talk about all of these in the menu system because they have their own listing in the menu system. But this is a shortcut to that button, and Canon, if you're listening, I know you're not, but if you happen to be listening, please make this programmable. Let us decide what we wanna do with this button. Because I know a lot of people who just don't use this button very much. But it's a shortcut if you do use it.