Live View & Picture Style

[allenlennon]

I got a couple of questions:

1) With live view on the camera lcd screen enabled i noticed when you make changes you actually see what happens, so im wondering is this a good tool to help you learn? Or isnt it?

2) Picture Styles, i understand changing it to landscape for landscapes, but putting it to neutral or faithful does that give me more to do in PP? Can someone explain how to use these to my advantages?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

[Bear]

1. I would say Live View is a good learning tool, however I would not take what is seen on the LCD too literally, Live View Auto Focus is processed differently from the "normal" AF, so there may be differences between the two, and Live View uses much more battery.

2. Picture styles are presets for particular subject matters and preferences, for example Landscape is set a little sharper and more accent on greens and blues, Portrait is preset for better skin tones and a little less sharp to flatter the ladies, etc. You can also make your own custom styles. Picture styles are more for those who don't use PP, or to give them a head start in PP. Obviously if you choose the wrong style, such as Landscape to do portraits, you will have more to do in PP

[Donald]

Allen Re #2, if your shooting RAW, then you're capturing the RAW data irrespective of what you've got the camera set to. So it will make a difference in terms of the resulting JPEG that you see on the back screen, but it shouldn't make any difference to what you take out of the camera and load onto your computer.

Re #1, what actual changes happening is it that you are referring to? I would suggest that if you are using LiveView, which I do a great deal of the time, you have it set up so that the histogram is showing on top of image on the screen. You can learn much more about the changes you are making (shutter/aperture/ISO) by studying the histogram than by looking at the image itself. Looking at the image is, I consider, purely for compositional purposes, not for exposure purposes.

[allenlennon]

thanks to you both. I was wondering if thhere was a way to view the histogram before you shoot. Another question, is there a thread that shows how to understand the histogram, or a site? I can choose either brightness or rgb(i think thats what its called).

[allenlennon]

re cap from my last post, i was wondering if there was a way to view the histogram, and now i can! yay

[Donald]

thanks to you both. I was wondering if thhere was a way to view the histogram before you shoot.

Yes. Once you're in LiveView, press the 'Info' button on the back of your camera.

Sorry, Allen, can't remember what camera you have. I hope this works ofr you the same way as it does on my 40D.

[allenlennon]

i have a canon 1000d. all i have to do once in live vies is press the display button twice to get it up. Now i just read the tutorial on understanding the histogram, amd the tutorial digital exposure techniques. This is why i love the CiC

[herbert]

Hi Allen,

You will find that live view is a great way to learn how changing the white balance of your camera has a dramatic effect on the look of the photo. If you are not shooting in raw then the white balance is important to get right in camera. Otherwise you will get some strange looking colours in your pictures. This is very true when shooting indoors or sunsets since this is where the auto white balance often makes mistakes (it tends to over compensate for what it thinks should be normal colours).

On some cameras you can set the colour temperature directly instead of using different presets (Sunshine, Cloudy, Tungsten, etc). With live view this is very neat as you can line the camera held at arms length up with the scene and just dial in the white balance to match.

If you are shooting in raw then you can change white balance and picture styles afterwards using Canon's Digital Photo Professional (DPP) software. This is actually a nice way to get to know what the different modes will do to the same scene and learning how to use them.

Regards,

Alex