So, if you feel resistance, don’t force things – you could break the monitor. Instead, rely on that feeling of resistance to remind you to turn the screen the other way.
● Use only your finger to perform touch-screen functions. Use the fleshy part of your fingertip, not the nail or any other sharp object, and be sure that your fingers are dry because the screen may not respond if it gets wet.
● Don’t apply a screen protector. Canon also advises against putting a protective cover over the monitor, such as the kind people adhere to their smartphones. Doing so can reduce the monitor’s responsiveness to your touch.
● Watch the crunch factor. Before positioning the monitor back into the camera (whether face in or face out), use a lens brush or soft cloth to clean the back of the camera where the monitor folds in so there’s nothing on it that could damage the monitor.
● Clean smart. To clean the screen, use only the special cloths and cleaning solutions made for this purpose. (You can find them in any camera store.) Do not use paper products such as paper towels because they can contain wood fibers that can scratch the monitor. And never use a can of compressed air to blow dust off the camera – the air is cold and can crack the monitor.
Viewing Shooting Settings
Your camera offers several displays that present the current picture-taking settings. The next sections explain the displays that are available during viewfinder photography. See the later section “Switching to Live View Mode” for information about displaying similar data when you use Live View, the feature that enables you to compose photos on the monitor instead of through the viewfinder.
Shown in Figure 1-15, the Quick Control screen appears on the monitor when the camera is in shooting mode – that is, when you’re not viewing menus, checking out your pictures in Playback mode, and so on. The screen displays different data depending on your exposure mode and whether features such as flash are enabled. The left side of Figure 1-15 shows the screen as it appears in Scene Intelligent Auto exposure mode; the right side, Tv mode (shutter-priority auto-exposure).
FIGURE 1-15: The data displayed on the Quick Control screen depends on your exposure mode.
❯❯ Display and hide the Quick Control screen. By default, the screen appears automatically when you turn on the camera and then turns off if no camera operations are performed for 30 seconds. You can turn the display on again by pressing the shutter button halfway and then releasing it. To turn off the display before the automatic shutoff occurs, press the Info button (on the back of the camera, just below the power switch). Press the Info button twice to cycle back to the Quick Control screen.
❯❯ Keep an eye on the battery symbol and the shots remaining value. A full battery like the one in the figure means that the battery is charged; as it runs out of power, bars disappear from the symbol. The shots remaining value indicates how many more pictures will fit in the free space available on your memory card. This value depends in large part on the Image Quality setting, which determines the resolution (pixel count) and file type (Raw or JPEG). If those terms are new to you, the next chapter explains them.
❯❯ You can replace the Quick Control screen with an electronic level by pressing the Info button. This feature is useful when you use a tripod and want to ensure that the camera is level to the horizon. When the horizontal line appears green, as shown in Figure 1-16, you’re good to go. Press Info again to return to the Quick Control screen. You can enable or disable the level and Quick Control screen from Setup Menu 3, as described in the Setup Menu 3 section later in this chapter.
FIGURE 1-16: Press the Info button to toggle between the Quick Control display and an electronic level.
A limited assortment of shooting data, such as the shutter speed and f-stop, appears at the bottom of the viewfinder, as shown in Figure 1-17. In the framing area of the viewfinder, you may see marks that indicate the portion of the screen that contains autofocusing points. (The appearance of the autofocus markings depend on your autofocus settings, which you can explore in Chapter 5.) In the first screen in the figure, the four black brackets represent the autofocusing area.
FIGURE 1-17: The default viewfinder display (left) can be customized to include a grid, electronic level, and flicker warning (right).
In the following sections, we walk you through how to display and customize the viewfinder.
The markings in the framing area of the viewfinder appear automatically when you first turn on the camera; to display the shooting data, you must press the shutter button halfway. The display remains active for a few seconds after you release the button, and then the viewfinder display data shuts off to save battery power. To wake up the display, press the shutter button halfway and release it.
You can display gridlines in the viewfinder, as shown on the right in Figure 1-17, as well as a symbol that represents the electronic level. (When the lines at the sides of the symbol are horizontal, as in the figure, the camera is level.)
To hide or display these features, open Setup Menu 2 and choose Viewfinder Display. On the next screen, change the settings from Hide to Show. As you select each option, a preview appears at the bottom of the screen to remind you how enabling the feature affects the display.
When the Mode dial is set to an advanced exposure mode (P, Tv, Av, or M), the Viewfinder Display option offers a third setting, Flicker Detection. When the camera detects light sources that are blinking, which can mess up exposure and color, the word Flicker! appears in the area labeled in Figure 1-17. The biggest offenders are tubular fluorescent bulbs, which blink on and off so quickly that it’s difficult for the human eye to detect them. When you see this warning, you may want to enable the Anti-flicker Shoot option on the Shooting Menu. This feature, covered in Chapter 4, also is available only in the advanced exposure modes.
The number in brackets does not represent the shots-remaining value, as it does in
