A7 ll Monitor and viewfinder levels

[Richimage]

I purchased a Sony A711 and have been using it for nearly all of my video work.
I've got something going on that doesn’t make sense to me.  I’ve learned to live with it currently,  but there must be something wrong with my settings or maybe the camera.....

When shooting video or stills,  I like to refer to the back screen and the viewfinder for most of my exposure settings. I do a lot of fast moving corporate B-Roll and my observations on the monitor works best for me to adjust my exposure.

With the monitor brightness camera settings set at 0....nearly every shot ends up being overexposed after exporting the video into FCPX. The monitor looks properly exposed but on export the video looks hot.  To compensate for this effect, I've set my Monitor and Viewfinder brightness settings to 2.  Then, when I export the video it looks very close to what I saw on the camera monitor when the video was shot.  I cannot believe that this is normal....

The meter in the camera is more accurate but I don’t always have the time to experiment with the  Zero, Plus stops, or Minus stops. scale.  The meter can also be easily fooled by the amount of sky or dark areas.

So… Am I missing something in the settings that would allow me to rely on the exposure of the monitor/viewfinder.  I can tell if things are exposed properly if the monitor is set up properly. . 

Any suggestions as to what might be going on with the camera?  Or Me?  Or my Settings. 

Thanks for your time

Rich Rumppe
richimagevideo@me.com

[Guest all8]

Have you tried the Zebra Stripes?

[Richimage]

Yes.  But shouldnd the viewfinder and monitor be the most accurate at the 0 setting of the monitor brightness menu?

I have to run that set up at + two to get the exposure that exports to my computers.

[K2Kevin]

Ive had a similar experience with exposure (mine were underexposed) compared to what I saw in viewfinder.  Changing the brightness levels of both view finder and LCD did help.  Also looking at the histogram helped the most.  After a bunch of trial and error, I feel I have it dialed in now, and know what to expect.

 

Try printing...  my prints came out amazing even when it looked underexposed in Lightroom.  I keep my monitor brightness pretty low as well.

[Guest all8]

Yes.  But shouldnd the viewfinder and monitor be the most accurate at the 0 setting of the monitor brightness menu?

I have to run that set up at + two to get the exposure that exports to my computers.

 

No. Monitor brightness has nothing much to do with exposure. The image itself is unchanged, only the backlight of the display is increased or decreased, that might be helpful (I turn mine down) but there is no reason that 0 should be most accurate - 0 is probably just the mid point between Max and Min for the display.

 

Its a Sony camera after all, most of the default settings are stupid. 

[K2Kevin]

No. Monitor brightness has nothing much to do with exposure......

I think he understands this, like me, he just wants what he sees in viewfinder/monitor to more closely match the output exposure. The brightness of viewfinder can falsely make you think you are getting a perfect exposure, so you do have to look at meter or histogram, viewfinder can lie to you.

[Richimage]

Thanks for your comments.  It appears that I can't use this sony camera the same way I use my other video cameras.  It's a  "just deal with it"

issue from sony.  Too Bad.  It's a very good camera,  other than this one thing.