Author Topic: Screen Brightness Control  (Read 14334 times)

Photopage

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Screen Brightness Control
« on: September 09, 2020, 05:08:15 PM »
I have a 2.1 and the screen is amazingly bright. Great for outdoor shooting in sunlight.  But when I'm shooting in the studio I would like an option to control the brightness down to a level that matches the viewing conditions.  Would this be something that a future update could include?
Love the camera, thanks!

Nikon1

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Re: Screen Brightness Control
« Reply #1 on: September 10, 2020, 01:02:45 PM »
I double that.
 its kind of hard to expose the image correctly, because it seems that bright in low light.
 Personally, i really like it as bright as it is, and find it absolutely nessercary for outdoor stuff. I think i will even keep it at full brightness, if i could change it for most of the time, but i see why one would maybe have it darker. For me, a Histogramm or at least a small exposure Indicator (on some Cameras it just shows an indicator for propper exposure, and values from +3 Stops over to 3 Stops under, as well as Way over and way under Exposure, which would be 3 Stops. Some Cameras will just show an Number for this, but this allready helps so much to get an idea of your exposure!), would really help to get the best out of the Camera without the need to have an External Monitor with Histogramm hooked up at all times.

sanjay

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Re: Screen Brightness Control
« Reply #2 on: September 11, 2020, 10:53:25 AM »
Thanks for the feedback! Brightness control for the LCD display is something in the works for a future update, so please stay tuned. As far as more intelligent features like an exposure indicator, we'd have to do a bit of digging before coming up with a solution, but it is definitely a useful idea beyond the zebra stripes.

At this point in time, and with the resources we have in the software engineering department, I'm trying to adhere to a quarterly update schedule for the Chronos 1.4/2.1.

Nikon1

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Re: Screen Brightness Control
« Reply #3 on: September 11, 2020, 11:18:37 AM »
Also thanks for the Reply!
 while i dont really know how the Hard-Ware or software side of things work for this, here is some kind of idea /background info, how i think it could work.
 Most Cameras i have worked with wont really update Exposure instantly, so grabbing a random Frame every Second or twice a second should be fine. If there Is enough Processing power for something like this, and it wont bottleneck anything else, grabbing a bunch of Frames randomly or at certain time Intervalls and getting an Average over time could be helpfull for Scenes with flickering lights or fast moving things which will influence the Average Exposure by a lot.
 .
 Then most cameras (DSLR/ DSLM) will allow you to choose between Center POINT Exposure, Center Average Exposure, and Average Exposure over the Entire Frame. Those will mostly not use the Entire Frame (on the Most modern DSLM they might, but on the older DSLR there usually was just a single Sensor or just a few of those) to figure out exposure. Those options could be very helpfull for example if you are shooting a concert and The stage in the Center is all bright, but nothing else is, so the Whole Frame is well exposed, but the Part you want to actually see is to bright.
 Now for the Chronos, i think you can get away with using like 100 to 200 Pixels which you read out for this, and Taking an Average of those. Average Brightness value over those ~100 Pixels can then be directly remaped to an Exposure Reading visible to the User (or just display it as Raw data, like 0 for minimum brightness, 1 for Maximum Brightness, would allready help a lot). I guess you will have to try that out, but maybe you can get away with using even less data points, especially for the Center Average Exposure mode. I guess it might be Smart to use Pixel Pairs or even 2x2 Pixels for a Single Data point, to not catch a Random Bright or Dark pixel (also Bayer pattern and a certain Color Could be Darker than other Colors, influencing measured Brightness vs. Real brightness, if anything less than 2x2 Pixels are used for a single "probe" Point) and also to minimize impact from Sensor noise. For Center Point Exposure, reading out a bunch of pixels right in the Center will be Good enough. Maybe something like the Average from the Center 4x4 Pixels or something like that....
 For a Propper Histogramm you will however propably need at least 100 or 200 data Points. Then just figure out how to get distribution of Brightness values onto an Graph and The Histogram is done.

hstorey

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Re: Screen Brightness Control
« Reply #4 on: August 05, 2021, 09:13:49 PM »
Thanks for these thoughts Nikon1, hopefully, those are helpful for the dev team!

Just wanted to second above, and users from other forums and say - it would be hugely beneficial to the shooting workflow to incorporate some form of exposure indicator in a firmware update.

A histogram combined with the current zebras would really be a huge step up and would hopefully satisfy the majority of users' needs.

Thanks.

hutber

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Re: Screen Brightness Control
« Reply #5 on: February 11, 2022, 05:13:36 AM »
Not to bring up a post that is past 120 days. I imagine an update for this hasn't been released? I'm actually finding it very difficult to see my screen when its sunny outside.