LCD Screen on digital camera

What is the main purpose for the LCD screen on any digital camera?

To display the menu.

What is the main purpose for the LCD screen on any digital camera?

There are several purposes, among them the menu display and the display of your pictures. It's up to you to determine the main one!

To display the menu.

 

+1 or 2.... for sure

 

I turn off the view of the most recent image, but there is an argument in certain special cases for "live view".

 

Even more rarely in my experience, you want to double check what you got.

Camera viewfinders are more complicated than you might think. What we want is a way to preview the picture we are about to take with high accuracy. Now most pictures we take will come out OK even if the viewfinder view is tainted. This is a subject that has been worked on for years by the camera makers. The best solution involves using mirrors and prisms. Such a design known as a SLR (single lens reflex) allows the photographer to preview, almost exactly, what the camera will see, when the shutter is activated.

 

The SLR design is optically and mechanically complex and this elevates the cost of the camera. A cost most serious photographers gladly pay in order to get preview accuracy. Now with the film camera, no one has been able to make much additional headway. The advent of digital photography has changed the viewfinder‘s scheme.

 

The digital imagining chip allows the camera maker the opportunity to display to the photographer a worthy preview. Now purest still favor the SLR design but Keep in mind, digital photo technology is still in its infancy thus improvements are coming minute by minute.

 

In the current digital camera design, a replica of what the camera sees is displayed on an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display). This image is far lower in resolution than the actual view presented to the camera’s image sensor. Additionally the color rendering of this preview image is substandard. There is great room for improvement. You need not worry, new previewing technology is forthcoming.

 

Meanwhile, the previewing screen affords an opportunity to display a plethora of thing like; shutter speed, ISO, aperture, focal length, camera-to-subject distance, a preview of depth-of-field, time, date, not to mention computer based menus. The SLR was one the preferred, digital allows opportunity. Stick around, you haven’t seen anything yet!

What is the main purpose for the LCD screen on any digital camera?

To show you exactly* what the final image will look like.

 

* Or as close as the technology will allow. The colour is rarely totally accurate.

 

Menu selection is a very secondary function IMO.

The best solution involves using mirrors and prisms.

Highly debatable Alan, highly debatable!

Is there anyway to check (using ip addresses) all these new B&W noobs are the same rascal?

I suspect they're all in the same lazy teacher's class.

 

And it keeps lockdown boredom at bay.

For most photographers, most of the time, the LCD is just used for menus. My main use of the LCD is to 'delete all photos on card''. I've used the LCD differently in 2 other cases:

- to check whether my manual flash settings produce the expected result (I rarely use flash)

- just once, as an aid (with 10x magnification) in fine-tuning my manual focus on small art objects when my camera was mounted on a tripod

Menu selection is a very secondary function IMO.

This may be true ... for Rodeo Joe.

 

Something else beside menu functions the LCD screen can be useful for is looking at the histogram for each image.

To show you exactly* what the final image will look like.

 

* Or as close as the technology will allow. The colour is rarely totally accurate.

This, unfortunately, is untrue. What I get on the LCD screen is a camera-generated jpg preview of the RAW file I just shot. Except for composition, it often looks not similar to what comes up on my home monitor in the RAW converter I use. The LCD preview jpg is generally sharper, richer, has more contrast, and, yes, the colors are also off. The difference in screen resolution from my home monitor and the small size of the LCD screen itself also make a big difference. Don’t get me wrong, it can be a wonderful preview tool to use, but it does not come close to showing you exactly what you’ll see when you get home. Over time, you’ll learn what those significant differences are and likely be able better to predict what you got from what you see in the preview.

What is the main purpose for the LCD screen on any digital camera?

The main purpose for some like DSLR or rangefinder (like the Leica M) is for menu.

But it is used also for review the shots you have taken and to use as viewfinder.

Can also get you chucked out of a theatre where photography is not permitted, by some jobsworth who looks over your shoulder and sees the images - or so I have been told ...

What I get on the LCD screen is a camera-generated jpg preview of the RAW file I just shot.

No. That's a post-view, not a preview.

 

The preview shows a live stream of what's hitting the sensor in (near) real time and with a very good approximation of how that image will finally appear.

 

And what are the alternatives?

• A direct vision view through a tiny peephole that has parallax error and gives no clue about focus, depth-of-field, contrast or colour?
  
• A view on a ground-glass screen that shows only an approximation of depth-of-field, and doesn't even begin to approximate the final colour and tonal transformation of the captured image?
  

An on-camera screen also cannot give a real view of either colour, resolution/sharpness or depth of field. Colour is different, changes when viewed on another screen, and when imported into image processing software. Changes again when going from image processing to final output. There is only a rough approximation on that camera screen.

And those screens are too small to get a good idea of sharpness-parameters.

All in all, not much better than old style reflex finders viewing a ground glass. If at all.

The thing these screens can do, however, is show a bright image of a dark scene. Within limits.

 

Colour, by the way, is not important in black and white images.

I use the LED on my P&S to meter my film shots. Histogram, image lens selection,aperture, shutter, BW or color, etc. Just a clarification someone made about SLR's. Many do not show the whole picture the film captures. Could be 90%. Only the best cameras can you see 100%. I don't know about DLSR's as I never owned one. Maybe someone can clarify.

No. That's a post-view, not a preview.

Give us all a break, would you?

 

Clearly, I was talking about looking at the shots I just took. I'm not going to play your academic, semantic, deflection games.

 

For those shots I just took, when I look at my LCD screen, a lot more is off than the color.

Usually I'll give my images a quick glance when I start shooing a particular scene, or to check and see if I actually managed to get something resembling what I'm trying to capture.

 

Of course, if I'm being paranoid about focusing, I can use live view and zoom in on the LCD to get the focus closer than I could ever hope to get in the viewfinder. In addition, I can focus at the shooting aperture while still keeping things relatively visible so as to avoid focus shift when stopping down.

 

As a bit of advice, I recommend turning off image review, which is buried somewhere in the menus(which, BTW, is my main use for the LCD). On a functional level, at least on my Nikons, I find image review a bit of a pain since if, for example, I want to change the focus point I can end up scrolling through photos or the various view options. Turning it off also saves battery power.

And, of course, LCD screens have been used even since before digital cameras were invented to display settings.

Moderator Comment:

 

Is there anyway to check (using ip addresses) all these new B&W noobs are the same rascal?

 

There are investigative procedures available.

 

At the moment we are accepting that these are different new members, probably from the same teacher's class and their questions are sincere, though mostly all were wrongly placed in Black and White Forum, so please let's drop the topic of conversation being the teacher and the students' questions, etc - many conversations have already been moved to Beginner Questions Forum, as such please respond accordingly as one would to any beginner's question, keeping the conversation on track, offering advice to the Beginner and without unnecessary quibbling and argument over other's contributions.

 

Thanks,

 

William

I use the LCD screen when I want to place the camera in a position in which I cannot see through the viewfinder, e.g. with a very low angle shot near the ground or an over-the-head shot above a crowd in front of me.