Light/dark area real-time indication in Live View

I recently attended a talk given by a respected landscape photographer. He is an advocate of using manual exposure mode when using a tripod and said that he uses this mode as he can then expose as far to the right as possible whilst seeing the effects in the histogram that appears in Live View.

Thinking this sounds like a good theory, I tried it on my K5. If I select Live View then dial in an exposure for an image with (say) no light/dark areas highlighted, and then increase exposure to the right, I would expect to do this until light areas start being highlighted in Live View. However, it appears that after I increase the exposure, I need to then do another Live View to see the effect, i.e. the effect is not visible in real time.

I hope this makes sense. Can anybody confirm or advise what I am doing wrong ?

Many thanks
Nigel

Hi Nigel

In Live view with manual exposure settings you should be able to adjust the shutter speed and / or aperture and instantly see the effect on the LCD. I am away from home at present but when I get back I will check on my K-5IIs and K-3 to see what happens.

Regards
David

David

It doesn't. I just picked up my K5 11 and it doesn't do this. Also looked through all the menus and couldn't find anything which would do it.

I grabbed a Non Pentax SLR and that does it by default.

The MX-1 does this, and it does have potential for being useful. I'm not sure how accurate it is but it will at least be a guide.

Many thanks for your responses chaps.

This is what I was expecting to happen.........

........... and this is what is happening on my K5. It will be interesting to hear from David if the K3 performs differently.

Best regards
Nigel

It's a pity that Pentax don't do it If it did we could all complain that the viewfinder was always TOO DARK or TOO LIGHT!

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Hi Nigel, you said that the respected photographer was checking the histogram when using live view, and with that item checked to appear in the relevant menu, then you can do this early. You don't actually say he was suggesting you refer to the actual lcd brightness itself. Is there confusion here? The actual brightness of the lcd would not period any sort of accuracy in exposure judgements, but the histogram and brigh/dark areas indicator would be helpful.

Hi Nigel,

Yes, I quite agree, you can check the histogram in the Live View. My point is though that on the K5 any subsequent changes made to exposure settings are not then reflected in either the histogram or the 'blinkies' - you have turn Live View off then back on again to see the effect of said changes.

To avoid any confusion, the landscape expert was not refering to LCD brightness.

Hope that heps !

Regards
Nigel

That seems strange .. I need to go and check it on the K7, which should work in the same way. I am sure I have seen the histogram on the live view screen move up and down and change shape as I'm changing the exposure value, by whatever means (usually the shutter speed being adjusted in manual mode). I've used it in Av also and used exposure compensation and I'm sure the histogram has responded to those inputs in real time. I'll do another check at home tomorrow and report back.

Just had a play on my K5II. In live view neither the histogram or bright/dark area indicators react to manual exposure changes but both respond to EV +/- changes - so maybe that is the way to go.

You could be right smudge, and maybe I'm just imagining it works with manual shutter adjustment ... I certainly do shoot in Av a lot using live view and histogram, and adjust with EC, so thats probably what I'm seeing. Of course as well there may have been updates between the K7 and K5II models as well as different firmware which could make differences between the cameras.

We're very lucky to have + / - 5 stops of EC, so that should be plenty for most situations when needing the histogram in live view

Tried on the k3, the histogram in live view is instantaneous, and blinkies for highlights also instantaneous.

for the live view image, the illumination only varies by a couple of stops once it starts over/under exposing it only either shows light or dark, the blinky area does still change for overexposure right up until the whole screen blinks red.

Thanks for this, Smudge. I'll go with this. My bent is normally landscapes using Av or Manual so changing the EV is effectively the same as changing the exposure stop.

Thanks, InFESTation. Looks like this was an added feature on the K3 development that didn't feature on the K5 variants.