Monitoring your exposure
Learn to control how bright or dark your images will appear
Some camera functions can provide a visual guide to exposure and allow you to spot any potential problems in a shoot.
If you’re using a Canon EOS R mirrorless camera, you can use the electronic viewfinder’s exposure simulation, which displays the image at a brightness that’s close to the captured image’s exposure. It’s not possible to do this in a DLSR’S optical viewfinder, although exposure simulation does work when you’re shooting in Live View via the rear screen. It isn’t as convenient as the electronic viewfinder option though, particularly as it can be harder to see the image in bright light.
With exposure simulation enabled, you’ll be able to see the image brightness change as you dial in exposure compensation or change one of the exposure settings when you’re shooting in Manual mode. It’s a really quick way to make adjustments on the fly – and a great option when you’re shooting sports, wildlife and other fast-moving subjects where you don’t have time to check the histogram. If you do want to view a live histogram while you shoot, then you can do that too. Tapping the INFO button will cycle through the various information overlays, including the histogram. If the histogram is pushed off the right side of the graph, the brightest areas are likely to be overexposed and hold no detail. If parts of the histogram are clipped on the left side, the dark areas may be underexposed. If you shoot RAW, you’ll record more picture information than is shown, so you may be able to claw back detail that the histogram indicates is lost to over and underexposure.
Call up an exposure warning to alert you to areas of the image that may be overexposed by enabling Highlight alert in the blue Playback menu, and bright areas at risk of ‘burnout’ will blink on the screen.