EB-1 wrote:
I never use the a7RVI EVF to judge accurate color nor exposure.
Outside the ambien lighting is uncontrolled so the eye/brain are always autoadjusting. The histograms have some general value, but don't work in all exposure modes. The Zebroids are good for some purposes.
A more nuanced explanation of my thinking about EVFs and LCD displays and color is that while they don’t (for a bunch of reasons of reasons) show us “accurate” color we can use them to make useful judgments about color, especially relative to exposure decisions.
For example, while I don’t believe that they would show me accurate color in situations such as colorful sunsets (that’s really problematic) of with autumn foliage I can make useful judgments about color by what I see in the display. For example, I recognize (at least on the camera I’ve used for a decade and another one that I’ve used for a few years) when colorful highlights are likely to blow out the red color channel — the color in those areas shifts in a particular manner.
In a way, the concept of accurate color in an electronic display is fundamentally problematic, and for several reasons. Think about the following:
1. In low light our vision becomes less sensitive to color, but a camera does not. Should an accurate electronic display mimic this characteristic of human vision and suppress colors in low light situations?
2. We respond differently to a scene when we view it in person, as a print, or as an electronic display. In person our eyes adapt dynamically to local luminosity variations within the scene — looking into a shaded area our eyes dilate for example, and our focus adjusts as we move between near and far elements of the scene. That does’t really happen when we look at a print with its much more limited dynamic range a a predetermined focus — or expanded DOF. An electronic display looks different that a top-illuminated print — as one friend likes to say, it seems to glow from within. It can never literally look the same as a print or the real world.
3. Frequently, at least for some of us who shoot raw and think more about the image data we are capturing than about a SOOC image, our exposure choices would — and should! — produce an image in an electronic viewfinder or LCD that look very different from the image we intend to create. An obvious example — as in a sample I shared recently — is scenes with extremely bright highlights and dark shadows. Unless we want to blow out those highlights we are likely to “underexpose” (by which I mean correctly expose!) the scene to protect those highlights while planning to lift the shadows in post. What should the display show us here — the very dark and dim image that we intend to capture or some approximation of the real scene in front of us.
I’m all for making electronic displays more closely reflect what we might capture in a photograph to the extent that this is possible — but that extent is quite limited.
In the end, just as we did with film, we have to develop an ability to predict what the final image will look like.
An exception may well be for those who do in-camera jpg capture rather than working with the raw file. Here it probably is useful to get some decent idea of what that jpg may look like… which is probably why we’re familiar with situations in which the camera’s display is based on the jpg settings.
EB-1 wrote:
I never use the a7RVI EVF to judge accurate color nor exposure.
Outside the ambien lighting is uncontrolled so the eye/brain are always autoadjusting. The histograms have some general value, but don't work in all exposure modes. The Zebroids are good for some purposes.
Same.
I would not use the viewfinder or the LCD to judge scene colors. (I also would not use the optical display of a DSLR to make those judgments.) For me the viewfinder is a place to work out a composition, perhaps time the initiation of the exposure, keep an eye on what is happening in the frame (unless I’m on the tripod, in which case I just look right at the scene), check various settings and readouts (focus, histogram, etc.).
My goal is to capture the most useful image data in the exposure, and the exposure may often not really look like the scene did.
I supppose that I can understand why one might want the screen to somewhat accurately represent what the in-camera jpg will look like, but beyond that it isn’t all that important to me.
I never did either. But the counter point is with the A7R6 EVF, it's so good you can judge color and exposure. Incredible really.
A more nuanced explanation of my thinking about EVFs and LCD displays and color is that while they don’t (for a bunch of reasons of reasons) show us “accurate” color we can use them to make useful judgments about color, especially relative to exposure decisions.
For example, while I don’t believe that they would show me accurate color in situations such as colorful sunsets (that’s really problematic) of with autumn foliage I can make useful judgments about color by what I see in the display. For example, I recognize (at least on the camera I’ve used for a decade and another one that I’ve used for a few years) when colorful highlights are likely to blow out the red color channel — the color in those areas shifts in a particular manner.
In a way, the concept of accurate color in an electronic display is fundamentally problematic, and for several reasons. Think about the following:
1. In low light our vision becomes less sensitive to color, but a camera does not. Should an accurate electronic display mimic this characteristic of human vision and suppress colors in low light situations?
2. We respond differently to a scene when we view it in person, as a print, or as an electronic display. In person our eyes adapt dynamically to local luminosity variations within the scene — looking into a shaded area our eyes dilate for example, and our focus adjusts as we move between near and far elements of the scene. That does’t really happen when we look at a print with its much more limited dynamic range a a predetermined focus — or expanded DOF. An electronic display looks different that a top-illuminated print — as one friend likes to say, it seems to glow from within. It can never literally look the same as a print or the real world.
3. Frequently, at least for some of us who shoot raw and think more about the image data we are capturing than about a SOOC image, our exposure choices would — and should! — produce an image in an electronic viewfinder or LCD that look very different from the image we intend to create. An obvious example — as in a sample I shared recently — is scenes with extremely bright highlights and dark shadows. Unless we want to blow out those highlights we are likely to “underexpose” (by which I mean correctly expose!) the scene to protect those highlights while planning to lift the shadows in post. What should the display show us here — the very dark and dim image that we intend to capture or some approximation of the real scene in front of us.
I’m all for making electronic displays more closely reflect what we might capture in a photograph to the extent that this is possible — but that extent is quite limited.
In the end, just as we did with film, we have to develop an ability to predict what the final image will look like.
An exception may well be for those who do in-camera jpg capture rather than working with the raw file. Here it probably is useful to get some decent idea of what that jpg may look like… which is probably why we’re familiar with situations in which the camera’s display is based on the jpg settings.
YMMV.
Sep 03, 2026 at 09:06 AM
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