New owner of Nikon Z

anoutsos

New member
Hi all. I have just bought a Nikon Z5II, my first Nikon Z camera, and I am bit confused about the behaviour of the EVF. I have used Nikon DSLRs for over 15 years, and in my experience the viewfinder did not change brightness every time I moved from a bright area to a darker one and vice versa. It seem that the Z5II EVF shows me a preview of the exposure. Is it possible to turn this feature off? I have my camera set to Aperture-priority, manual focus, and the "d9: View Mode (Photo Lv)" setting to "View-[camera icon]". I tried the other setting, "View-[eyeball]" but it still changes the brightness. Am I missing a setting elsewhere? My aim is to try an see if I prefer the EVF emulating an optical viewfinder, i.e. just showing the real brightness of a scene but calculating the correct shutter speed without any previewing in the EVF.
Thanks
 

anoutsos

New member
Thanks BF. I have tried both the d9 setting, as explained above, and the Viewfinder brightness (changed from Auto to Manual), but it kept previewing. Would you happen to know which other setting may be responsible for the exposure preview? I will try to have yet another look at the settings, in the meantime.
Thanks for responding.
 

BF Hammer

Senior Member
Screenshot_20251127-154741.png
 

Clovishound

Senior Member
Many photographers prefer the "exposure preview" that an EVF gives. It took me a couple weeks to get used to the EVF vs the traditional optical viewfinder. Once I did, I didn't want to go back. I now consider this one of the major strengths of mirrorless. Of course, we all have our own shooting preferences.
 
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