5D Mk III LCD auto-exposure compensation?!

[billium99]

Hi - I have the 5D Mk III and I'm confounded by one thing the camera does that I can't seem to prevent. No matter what setting I try in M mode, if I manually open or close my lens aperture, my LCD preview compensates to give me some kind of neutral exposure, but this is completely inaccurate from the final photo taken. 

Why does the camera do this by default? I get that LCD preview is not a great, accurate way to guage how the photo will look, but I'm just looking for a ballpark estimation of exposure, and instead, I basically have to snap photos, adjust, snap more photos, etc because the LCD preview doesn't help me.

Am I missing an obvious setting somewhere? I've tried WRENCH > LCD Brightness and set to manual, but this doesn't nothing to help with this exposure compensation.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Bill

[billium99]

Jumping beans that was it!

Phill I appreciate you looking in a manual for a camera you don't own, to help a newb out! I feel bad that I didn't find this, but take some solace from the page number...

This is a lesson in trying the manual before trying Google or forums, although I'm pretty sure I read about Exp Sim and thought I had it set correctly as Disabled. But in fact, I reversed that setting and have exactly what I was after.

Thanks again!

Bill

[RobertTheFat]

---

@billium99 wrote:

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the time!

Yes I'm actually using some Zeiss zf primes with de-clicked apertures, so I'm manually stopping down.

I stand corrected. That's what I get for guessing.

But...what I'm saying is - my LCD get's darker momentarily, then compensates and "normalizes" the exposure shown in the LCD window. If I open it up, the LCD gets brighter momentarily, reflecting my change, but then lowers the exposure in the preview. 

This does not affect the final image. But that's the problem. I can't get an accurate preview or anything even close to accurate, in the LCD screen if I'm experimenting with exposure parameters.

Does that make more sense?

Bill

---

Since I had my 5D3 manual handy, I decided to see if it would throw any light (pun intended!) on the issue. It seems that the LCD has both automatic and manual brightness settings (p. 285 in the Feb 2013 edition). While it doesn't come right out and say so, I think the implication is that if you use one of the manual settings, it won't apply a correction, but will let the brightness vary with the strength of the incident light. It might at least be worth trying if you haven't already done so.

[billium99]

Thanks Robert - that is for the overall LCD brightness, rather than the exposure. I did find that setting, but it wasn't what I was after. The update is that Phill found it. It's Exposure Simulation, which I think I'd seen information about, but incorrectly assumed that "Disabled" was the correct setting. Instead, it needed to be "Enabled".