[brj]

I just returned from a week-long hiking trip through various Northern Arizona canyons and was constantly struggling to evaluate shots on the back of my DSLR while in the field.  Between the blinding sun of the American Southwest, the variable tint of my glasses, and the limited size of the LCD on the back of the camera, it was just about impossible to do well.  I'm not completely opposed to shooting lots of frames, using the various "bracketing" features on the camera, and other such "carpet bombing" approaches to shooting (thanks for that phrase, Nathan!), but I would really like to be more efficient about the process if I could.

An LCD loupe may help, but aren't they problematic if you wear glasses?  Dumping shots to a "pad" computer with a larger screen (with hood?) seems like another solution, but has several pitfalls besides being unwieldy more expensive.  Any comments on either idea, or further suggestions?

Thanks!

[Vapor Audio]

Buy a Nikon D3 or D300 with that new, huge 3" 922K pixel display   I have an Epson P-5000, and it's nice, I don't know if I'd buy it again though given the same choice.  The best option is simply a better display on the body.

[JohnR]

What about using the histogram? Would it be visible enough to see that at least your exposure is OK?

[AdamM]

Yeah, John has it - that realtime histogram is a great way to go.

Shooting HDR, if you're not already, will give you an additional few stops of safety either way. Using the zoom will give you the focus - just zoom all the way in to see if it's sharp.

So: histogram =  exposure, regular view = composition, zoom = focus.  Your bases are covered!

Don't make us old guys start rattling off about 'Back when we shot film, you didn't know till the next week!' 

/A

[brj]

  Hey, I loved my film camera - it served me well for years!  I'm just trying to make the most of my new DSLR!

Actually, I do routinely check the histogram, but that isn't always enough.  (I usually keep the camera in the "highlight" mode so that it flashes overexposed regions of a picture.)   There have been cases where a pick isn't overexposed, but the exposure still isn't what I wanted - too much or too little.  I'm not to the point where I can sense that from the histogram alone.  Of course, as long as I'm not too far off, I could correct it in post-processing, but I'd like to get it right to begin with.

I've also had a few cases where the focus wasn't quite what I thought it was.  Example: A baby big horn sheep deep in bushes and the focus caught more of the bushes than the sheep, but it was close enough that you had no hope of seeing it on the 2.5" screen - and a higher res 3" screen wouldn't have helped either.  I could have zoomed the pic on the camera back, but didn't really have the time.  (I was also balanced on top of a wet rock at the time, so detailed investigations of any kind were hardly likely! ).

I've also had cases where I caught more of the polarizer than I intended.

So yes, in general, I agree that there are ways to catch most of these issues using the camera LCD (especially if I had a loupe to block out ambient light).  I was just hoping for an even better, faster way.

Thanks for all of the comments!

[nathanm]

Bring along a few old tires with you when you shoot.  If the sun is too bright simply light the tires on fire.  The black, acrid smoke will blot out the sun and shield your camera, giving you a clearer image on the LCD screen.