Sony NEX - LCD exposure/photo exposure

[hairboy]

I had a photographer come to my studio the other day with his Sony NEX camera, and we ran into a bit of a funny one.

The camera doesn't have a viewfinder, and everything is shown on the LCD on the back. the problem is because LCD shows the same exposure as what the current setting has, when you set your camera for studio lights (no ambient light), what you see on the LCD is also total blackness. The only to be able to see what you are shooting is to change the shutter speed or aperture to the stage where you can see what you are going to get. We nosed about in the settings, but couldn't find anything.

I guess you could work around it by placing it on tripod, pre composing, then pre-focusing before going back to the setting, but it seems like a long workaround, and wondered if there is any way in these cameras of independently showing a reasonable exposure on LCD regardless of the actual exposure setting?

Thanks in advance.

 

[stevelmx5]

Hi, as far as I'm aware there is no way for the rear LCD I show a 'natural' exposure like you'd get looking through a viewfinder.

However, I'm not sure how you were planning to trigger the studio lights (apart from one of the new hotshoe adapters) but when I'm shooting macro with an external flash I pop the built in flash up and drop the power so it triggers but doesn't impact the final shot. In doing this, the NEX shows your scene on the LCD even though the manual settings would result in a black shot. Hard to explain but shoot manual (e.g. 1/100, f9, ISO100) and pop up the flash after dialling down the power.

Cheers
Steve

 

[hairboy]

Hi Steve. Thanks for the reply. Yes, that's what i thought, and quite frankly, amazed by!

I had a hotshoe adaptor, and used with a standard trigger. It worked fine. it was just the LCD that was causing an (quite a major!!!) issue.

Are other Micro 4/3 and compacts like that? I haven't owned any non-SLR cameras in goodness knows how long, so I have no idea if that's the norm, or if this is unique to the Sony.

 

[heidfirst]

Not a NEX user but on the likes of the A77 etc. DSLTs there is a setting in the menu for this so I would imagine that there probably is on at least current production NEXs?