Chapter Four: Finding and Interpreting Image-Related Information
Before an Exposure
External Information
• On the camera body. It seems a bit obvious, but the settings of dials and switches can easily be overlooked, which will produce results quite different from what you expect.
Start with the power switch: Is the camera powered on? Then check the Mode Dial: Is the camera set to the mode you wish to work in? If you’re using electronic flash, is the flash mounted, charged, and powered on?
• On the lens.
Figure 4-1. The Canon EF 24–105mm f/4L IS USM lens
What’s the position of the AF/MF switch? Is the Stabilizer switch on or off? And, of course, is the lens cap removed?
• On the tripod? A bubble level! For panorama shooters, especially, you will want to ensure that the camera is level for the first shot, the last shot, and all the shots in between. I have a nice little bubble level that fits into the hot shoe on the camera, and it lets me confirm level in two dimensions. However, if the tripod yoke (where the legs come together) is not level when I pan for the next picture in my panoramic picture, I have to readjust my camera for level. But if I ensure that the tripod is level, then once I get the tripod head adjusted to give me a level shot, all I need to do for the remaining shots is to simply rotate the tripod head. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to confirm that the camera is level, but with the EOS 5D Mk III, there’s a nice electronic level built into the functions of the INFO. button, so you probably won’t need that bubble level in the hot shoe.
Internal Information
• LCD panel. The LCD panel is the main status-reporting system for the camera. Whether you are confirming values for a coming shot or modifying values after pressing one of the buttons near the LCD panel, this panel can dynamically alter the data being displayed to give you easy access to many control parameters. Figure 4-2 displays all the information that can be presented on the LCD panel. Of course, not all of that data is presented at any one time. This figure is a combination of two images from the Instruction Manual; the numbers in parentheses are references to pages in the Instruction Manual for further details.
Figure 4-2. The complete LCD panel
In the upper-left corner is an outlined area that provides white balance information only. When you press the Metering Mode Selection / White Balance Selection button, the panel is cleared of everything except the fields that relate to those two functions. Using the Quick Control Dial, you can scroll through the icons representing each of the available white balance settings. The last one you display becomes the new value. If you have a good idea of what each of these icons represents, this is a fast means to make short-term changes. However, to see the descriptive name and the approximate Kelvin value for each of these icons, you may want to use the LCD monitor for selecting the optimum white balance setting. If the INFO. screen is set at Shooting Settings, then this information is being displayed there already. Otherwise, simply press the Q button to display the white balance information and options on the LCD monitor. You can select the metering mode in a similar way, except that you’ll use the Main Dial to scroll through the available icons and watch for the icons to be displayed in the area immediately below the outlined area in the upper-right corner.
Figure 4-2. The complete LCD panel (cont.)
When you press the AF•DRIVE button, again the LCD panel is pretty well cleared, except for that upper-right outlined area. In the upper portion of that area, you will see the current AF mode, and you can use the Main Dial to scroll through the available options. In the lower portion of that area you’ll see the current drive mode, and rotating the Quick Control Dial is the means to scrolling through that set of options.
The third button is the ISO Speed Setting / Flash Exposure Compensation button. Pressing this button will cause the flash exposure compensation scale to be displayed in the lower-left corner of the LCD panel, and the current ISO speed to be displayed just above that scale. Rotating the Main Dial allows you to select a new ISO value, and rotating the Quick Control Dial lets you set the amount of flash exposure compensation to be applied.
If you select the ISO Speed Settings parameter on the SHOOT2 menu, then select ISO and press SET, you can specify the minimum and maximum ISO values to be used. These values will now appear on the LCD monitor’s Quick Control screen, along with the scrollable set of values displayed on the LCD panel.
• Normal shooting. In normal shooting, if you simply turn the camera on, the LCD monitor remains blank until you press the shutter button all the way down. After an image is captured, the camera will briefly display this new image, using the “current” display format (see It’s All on the LCD Monitor, at the end of this chapter). The image review time is set in the Image Review parameter on the SHOOT1 menu, which provides for up to eight seconds of display (unless you choose the Hold option). That’s not enough time for an extensive review of composition, saturation, exposure, and other parameters, but if you press the INFO. button during that time, you’ll have the time established for Auto Power Off (in menu SET UP2) for careful and thorough review of the image and the camera parameters that contributed to the image.
• INFO. button. By default, pressing the INFO. button while the LCD monitor is dark results in the Camera Settings screen being displayed. Pressing the INFO. button again displays the electronic level, and pressing it a third time displays the Shooting Functions screen. (To delete one or more of these displays, use the INFO. Button Display Options parameter on the SET UP3 menu.)
Figure 4-3. The Camera Settings screen
The Camera Settings screen shows a rather static collection of image-influencing data, the exceptions being the Possible Shots value (which indicates the number of exposures remaining on the memory card, whose icon appears immediately to the left of the number) and the Freespace value that shows the amount of available space on the memory card.
Figure 4-4. Not level, either vertically or horizontally
Figure 4-5. Level, both vertically and horizontally
Figure 4-6. Not level, in portrait orientation
Figure 4-7. Level, in portrait orientation, both vertically and horizontally
The electronic level is a surprisingly accurate level (plus or minus one degree), and it works in two dimensions: body rotation (known by Canon as “horizontal level”), which is rotation around the axis of the lens, and “vertical level,” which indicates the tilt of the lens axis above or below a line parallel to the earth. As the body is rotated to an angle greater than 45 degrees in either direction, the display changes orientation from landscape to portrait, allowing the level to be used just as effectively in portrait photography.
Figure 4-8. The Shooting Functions screen
The Shooting Functions screen gives you a reasonably comprehensive display of the camera factors that influence exposure. You can’t use this screen to change settings (well that’s not entirely true; we’ll get to that in just a minute) but with this screen displayed, any changes you make to the values displayed here are immediately reflected on this screen. Now, for the “untruth”: if you press the Q button while this Shooting Functions screen is displayed, the screen is replaced with the Quick Control screen, which looks a great deal like the Shooting Functions screen. However, now all the fields are active and can be selected by navigating to a field with the Multi-controller joystick, then—except for White Balance Shift And Bracketing—using the Main Dial or the Quick Control Dial to scroll through the available options for that field. For White Balance Shift And Bracketing, once selected with the Multi-controller, you press the SET button, then use the Multi-controller to select the White Balance Shift you wish, use the Quick Control Dial to select the desired bracketing, and press SET again. Note that setting any unique values for White Balance Bracketing will cause the white balance icon on the Shooting Functions screen to flash. Also, the Flash Exposure Compensation field and the White Balance Shift And Bracketing fields are blank on the Shooting Functions screen unless they have been set to nonzero values.
Figure 4-9. The Quick Control screen
• Q button. Also known as the Quick Control button, this button has become my means of modifying exposure-controlling parameters.
Almost everything that you can accomplish by pressing one of the exposure-controlling buttons, then rotating the Main Dial or the Quick Control Dial while looking at the LCD panel, can also be performed in what I consider a more elegant manner: press the Q button, navigate the Quick Control screen on the LCD monitor with the Multi-controller’s joystick, press SET, then use the Main Dial or the Quick Control Dial to select the appropriate value, and press SET. I find this gives me a much larger display, on which a great deal more information regarding the available options is also displayed.
• MENU button. The MENU button brings a broad selection of menus to the LCD monitor. SHOOTING menus provide options that affect exposure, AF menus give you more control over the numerous ways to use the auto-focusing features of this camera, and PLAY menus optimize the viewing of images already recorded on the memory card. The PLAY menus also offer some degree of post-processing right in the camera. SET UP menus provide for customized configuration of many camera functions, and C.Fn menus allow you to establish values for several custom functions. There is an entire chapter for each specific group of menus later in this book.
• Live View. I’ve found Live View a valuable tool while working on macro-photography. An image created in the viewfinder is just as accurate as one displayed on the LCD monitor in Live View mode, but the larger screen allows more precise composition, especially at the edges of the image. A major advantage of Live View mode is the ability to press the magnify button and have the displayed image magnified five times, centered on the focusing rectangle. Pressing the magnify button again causes the original image to be magnified 10 times. (Pressing the magnify button a third time resets the magnification to 1x). This can be especially advantageous when dealing with a subject such as a simple flower blossom: often, you want to ensure that pollen-bearing anthers are in focus, but you also want to have those tiny dots at the bottom of the blossom in focus. With Live View, I usually set the aperture somewhere in the f/11-to-f/16 range, set the lens to MF (manual focus), compose the picture, use the Multi-controller to position the focusing rectangle over the area containing the anthers and the dotted base of the blossom, press the magnify button once or twice to enlarge the view, and use the lens’ focusing ring to fine-tune the focus. Now, for the best part: press and hold the depth-of-field preview button to see how much of the enlarged area will be in focus, and make that final manual adjustment for focus—not so much on a given spot, but for the range that will yield an in-focus set of anthers as well as in-focus dots on the bottom of the blossom. Now press the shutter button all the way down. If you were paying close attention during that process, you might have noticed that when you pressed the depth-of-field button, the image didn’t darken and may actually have brightened a bit, unlike with normal shooting when the image darkens because the lens stops down to the aperture that will be used in the actual image capture. The brighter image in Live View makes that final focusing confirmation even more specific and certainly makes for a simpler process.
Live View becomes even more valuable when you’re working with some older lenses that have great optics but don’t offer all the automatic features today’s DSLRs support. Setting all controls to manual, you start Live View and then proceed through composition, focus, exposure, and capture.
• Viewfinder. With the lens cap removed and the camera turned on, you should be able to see the complete view that the lens is capable of transmitting, plus the spot metering ring in the center of the image and the current autofocus point. Depending on the autofocus options you’ve set, you may also see multiple autofocus points representing an autofocus field, and the ring may be enclosed in a chain of arcs describing a rough rectangle. This indicates the Area AF frame that encloses the field for all 61 autofocus points. If you have enabled the VF Grid Display on the SET UP2 menu, then the grid will also be displayed.
(Rather than attempt to recreate this page, I’ve “borrowed” it directly from the Instruction Manual; the numbers in parentheses are pointers to pages in the Instruction Manual for further reference.)
When you depress the shutter button halfway, all the camera’s meters are turned on, and the results of all that metering are displayed at the bottom of the viewfinder screen. From left to right, you can see:
- An icon showing approximate battery level
- Shutter speed and aperture
- The exposure level indicator, showing amount of exposure compensation, amount of flash exposure compensation, or AEB (auto-exposure bracketing) range
- ISO, either the pre-set ISO speed or the effective ISO when in Auto ISO mode
- The maximum burst count for use if you are shooting in a continuous mode
- The AF status indicator and its focus confirmation icon
If you have set any other values, many will also be displayed in the viewfinder, interspersed among those already listed:
- AE lock icon or AEB (auto-exposure bracketing) icon
- Flash-ready icon or improper FE (flash exposure) lock warning
- FE lock icon or FEB (flash exposure bracketing) in progress indicator
- High-speed sync icon
- Flash exposure compensation icon
- FEL (flash exposure lock) indicator
- buSY (busy) indicator
- Multi function lock warning
- AF point selection icon
There are five conditions that the camera will recognize and alert you to, depending on the selections you have made on the Warnings 
In Viewfinder parameter on the C.Fn2 menu. To alert you, it will display the exclamation point icon in the lower-right corner of the image area to indicate that condition being currently active.
Figure 4-10. The complete viewfinder display
After an Exposure
It’s All on the LCD Monitor
The INFO. button is the major tool for evaluating after-the-exposure images either in image review mode (right after an exposure) or during playback mode. The INFO. button gives you four different screens to choose from:
1. Full-screen display of the image with no other data
2. Full-screen display of the image with basic exposure data, memory card type icon, folder and file information, and image number
3. Quarter-screen display of the image with a quarter-screen brightness histogram, both above a field showing the date and time of day, image quality and size, exposure priority setting, AF type, ISO setting, Picture Style, and white balance setting
4. Quarter-screen display of the image with a set of RGB histograms, brightness histogram, exposure priority setting, white balance setting, image quality, and size
Regardless of which screen you have selected as you exit the INFO. screen, that is the screen that will be displayed immediately after a new exposure or when you press the playback button.
• Immediately after the exposure. This is known as “image review” in the Canon world, and the period of time for the review is factory-set at two seconds. My reflexes are not as good as they used to be, so I’ve used the Image Review function in the SHOOT1 menu to increase that time to eight seconds. That gives me sufficient time to confirm that something close to what I wanted has been captured and to decide whether I want to press the INFO. button to look at other details of the exposure. Once on the INFO. screen, the display time-out is determined by the Auto Power Off function in the SET UP2 menu, which provides a set of values ranging from 1 minute to 30 minutes, and even Disable, which lets the camera continue to display the screen until you press another button or power off the camera.
• During playback. Pressing the playback button instructs the camera to display the most recently captured image, and to structure the display according to the last INFO. screen format. Pressing the INFO. button restructures the display based on the “next” INFO. screen format. During playback, the Main Dial or the Quick Control Dial can be used to scroll through the captured images, displayed according to the current INFO. screen format.
In the camera’s menu system, there are three menus of options for managing playback as well as some degree of in-camera post-processing. More on playback and the related functions in the chapter covering Playback menus.
