Images Looks Great on Camera LCD not on Computer

[nick_breedlove]

Hi,

 

When I shoot on my 10D the images on the LCD look perfectly exposed, with great

clarity, perfect balance of light and shadow, etc...then I download it to my computer.

For some reason everything looks much darker and I have to blast the levels way up

in Photoshop to get an image even remotely close to how good it looked on the LCD

screen...is there something I'm missing? Is there a color profile made for this camera,

or am I just missing a step?

 

Nick

[daniel_moore]

Be very careful when judging your exposure on the LCD. Far better practice is to turn on the histogram function in the Info display and use it to check your shots. It won't lie, but the display, with it's delightful 5 step brightness settings will nearly always show you what you'd *like* to see. Take one of the shots you're not too pleased with and either open it in Photoshop or in the camera itself and check the histogram.

[catchlight]

Daniel's right: the LCD tells you very little, but the histogram is very informative, especially in warning of blown highlights.

 

I shoot weddings, often in bright sunlight, and the histogram is an essential weapon in the battle to control reflections off a satin wedding dress among black suits.

 

The zoom feature is also very handy to check focus, depth of field, facial expressions and blinks in group shots.

 

You might want to turn your LCD intensity down, if it's showing images brighter than they are.

[michelle_peterson]

Hi, Always check your histogram for exposure. It gets to be second nature after awhile. The LCD in the 10D is quite bright so I lowered the brightness on mine. I shoot in SRGB and have my monitor set to that also.

[s._fisher]

I would not assume that your PC is showing the images correctly. You should try viewing the same image on a couple of other computers, as changing the default monitor settings and Adobe Gamma Loader can hose things as easily as they improve things. Or upload a sample RAW file for us to see.

[nico_smit]

Unless your monitor is properly calibrated with something like the Optical Spyder from Colorvision the appearance of the image on your monitor cannot be accepted as correct. If the histrogram on the camera indicates that the image is properly exposed and that image appears too dark on your monitor, your monitor settings are at fault.

[x]

Some comments: the clarity of LCD on the 10D will depend on the ambient light when you view it. It will be much clearer if you look at it in a darkened place than in bright sunlight.

- the LCD lightness/darkness varies quite a bit depending on the angle at which you view the image.

- The most likely cause is the need to calibrate your monitor. Adobe gamme is hopeless for many people (including myself) although some report success. Would recommend a specialist hardware calibrator like Eye-One Display. My LCD monitor on the PC was originally badly adjusted for shadow detail and I couldn't sort it out by twiddling with various controls, but the Eye-One Display did a great job fixing it and now it matches the EOS display.

[william_le]

I know this has no part, but how do you understand the histogram, I don't understand the bar graph.

[Rich_Phelan]

Check out Michael Reichmann's article on "Understanding Histograms" at http://luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/understanding-histograms.shtml

[gerry_szarek]

Nick, first turn on the histogram feature along with the blinking blown high lights (info on) in review mode. Second point, you can NOT judge white balance on that little LCD screen. Final point, when you expose you just want to be below blown hightlights for your exposure, as a start I always go with partial metering, and shot RAW format for anything serious.

 

BTW I assume you have updated the firmware on the camera (yes I know it's nots supposed to do anything on the exposure but it does).

 

GS

[oliver_s.]

As others pointed out, neither the LCD nor the monitor allow correct judgement of exposure and colours <u>unless the monitor has been calibrated</u>. Use the histogram. And for a first judgement on colours, compare the monitor and prints from your 10D's files.

[derek_linney]

Don't try and calibrate your monitor to match the LCD on your 10D - this route will cause you all sorts of problems when printing or posting images on the web / e-mailing them to other people.

 

The 10D LCD tends to display things lighter than they are in reality for the exposure you have taken. Use the histogram to check exposure: you want to avoid a large gap on the right hand side - you have underexposed - or high readings pressed up against the right hand side (together with flashing white areas in the image) - you have overexposed and blown highlights.

 

If you do calibrate your monitor you want to do this against printed pictures so that what you print is close to what you see on the monitor.

[josh_thornton]

Your computer monitor could be way off as well...unless it has been calibrated. The LCD is probably the main problem though.

 

Josh

[raymond_chi]

In my experience, I usually find the camera's LCD pretty 'accurate'. Most likely your computer monitor is not calibrated.

 

Go to http://www.displaymate.com/ and download their demo version. It has screens which you can use to calibrate the contrast/brightness of your monitor. This is the most basic calibration you need to do before making any kind of modification on images.

[raymond_chi]

The displaymate demo version can be found here

 

http://www.displaymate.com/demos.html