Canon T1i Live View

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Operation Viewfinder Live View Modes & Menus Video

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Canon T1i Live View Mode

Canon T1i Live View Displays

The Canon T1i's rear-panel LCD screen can be used as a live viewfinder, which is enabled by pressing the Print/Share/LiveView/Movie button outside of a menu or settings screen. Live View mode is only available, surprisingly, in the Rebel T1i's Creative zone modes, namely Program, Shutter, Aperture, Manual, and A-DEP. In Live View mode, the default display reports the current shutter speed, aperture, exposure compensation setting, ISO setting and number of available images at the bottom of the screen. Pressing the Canon T1i's DISP button enables a more detailed information display, and a third press displays a small histogram. Through a Setup menu option, you can also enable a gridline display. (Illustration courtesy Canon USA.)

The Canon T1i's Live View LCD display is virtually identical to that of its XSi predecessor, the most noticeable change being the substitution of the Live-View focus mode indicator replacing the drive-mode icon at the top of the Quick Menu. Here's a quick look at some of the Canon T1i's Live View display options:

Canon T1i Live View Display Options

This is the default display in Live View mode. The current exposure variables (shutter speed and aperture) are shown at left, as well as an exposure scale, shots-remaining, ISO, and a battery indicator. (The battery was running low when Rob captured these screen shots.)	This shot shows the Quick Menu overlay at left, which gives you rapid access to settings for AF mode, Picture Style, White Balance, shooting mode, and image size/quality. The little badge at lower right says "Exp. SIM", indicating that the Exposure Simulation feature has been enabled, approximating the brightness of the final image on the rear panel LCD screen.

Two different grid options are available to help you line up your shots. The 3x3 option is shown above.	The finer-grained grid option provides a 4x6 overlay.

There's also a luminance histogram display available as an option, although it covers a good part of the image area when it's active.	When "Live" (contrast-detect) autofocus is active, the camera indicates focus lock by changing the focus-area rectangle to green. The focus-area rectangle can be moved around the frame, so you can set focus anywhere you like. There's also a face-detect mode, a popular and useful feature ported from Canon's PowerShot point & shoot line.

Mix and match, you can combine the various Live View display options in multiple ways. You can also zoom into the image up to 10x, for a very accurate focus check. (Sorry, we didn't grab the zoomed views while we had the camera, we'll update once we get a production sample; or see the User Report in the overview section for a video that includes a sample of the zoom feature.)	Here's a look at the items on the Quick Menu in Live View mode. The fourth item down is the setting for movie resolution, which also shows you the maximum recording time left on the memory card at the chosen resolution.