This is a personal recommendation and one that tends to be mimicked by numerous photographers both amateurs and professionals alike. By reducing the screen brightness on your camera by one stop on the scale this tends to give a more realistic representation of what your images would look like in terms of brightness when viewed on a computer monitor, (which has been properly calibrated). All modern DSLR’s offer this facility and for those models which incorporate a My Menu facility it should be added to the list of favorite settings, thus allowing quick and simple adjustment as required.

A new feature that was first introduced on the Canon EOS 5D Mk II and more recently the Canon 7D is the provision of an ambient light sensor which is located on the rear of the camera next to the LCD screen. The purpose of the sensor is to measure the ambient lighting conditions and more importantly the intensity or brightness of the light falling on the screen. The result of this measurement will result in the screen brightness be altered to match the ambient conditions accordingly.

In theory this facility tends to work fairly well. There are, however, cases where the image displayed on the back of the screen can be bleached out or over exposed as a result over compensation of the sensor in bright conditions. As previously mentioned it would be advisable to switch this facility off and use the manual setting, reducing it by one stop

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