The automatic EVF/LCD switching on the Sony alpha 7 cameras is a real pain in the neck for me. When you bend over to have a good look at the LCD screen on the back of the camera, especially if you’re wearing a hat, the screen goes dark. This “feature” also keeps the camera from being as useful at waist level as it otherwise might be.
Today a reader provided a great workaround. which gets you the equivalent of the a directly accessed manual two-way (EVF/LCD) toggle on the Leica M240.
- Set C3, the custom button next to the finder, to “Finder/Monitor Sel.”
- Go to “Gear>4>Finder/Monitor” and set it to either “Viewfinder (Manual)” or “Monitor (Manual)”.
Every time you press C3, the camera will toggle between displaying information on the EVF and the LCD. It will remember which display you were using when you power down the camera, so, if you power it up and don’t see anything on the back of the camera and want to, just hit C3.
There are other workarounds that involve partially obscuring the light detector above the finder, but I’ve never found a way get it so that the camera does what I want it to do in all circumstances.
Oh wow, a seperate post! I feel honored =)
What’s also cool about this trick: You can have the camera permanently on, set it to EVF and then it’s virtually off until you put it up to your eye and it will instantly switch on the viewfinder.
That way the monitor and the constant sensor stream to the monitor won’t drain the battery as fast.
Nearly like a DSLR 😉
Alternatively, just set C4 (or any other custom button) to ‘Deactivate Monitor’. Leaves the SS/FS/EC/ISO display on the bottom line of the LCD but switches the preview off – if you raise the EVF to your eye , the EVF is then live – as above.
Added advantage, if you’re using the cam in manual exposure mode, you can simply check/cross check camera settings at a glance without faffing about.
Does this work also on A7ii?
Sadly,no.
Had my hopes up that this would work on the A7 but tragically it doesn’t. Hope you get better soon though!