Photoclubalpha

Though this was mentioned many many times, but I think it is worthy to mention it one more time on a separate thread:
If you shoot RAW then it would be very wise to adjust the "Creative Style" to "Portrait" with the contrast setting down to minimum (i.e. -3) and you'll experience a viewfinder with much more details in shady areas of a very contrasty scene.
This is definite with the a77 (so with the a65 too), but have to try it with the a55 yet.

Dr. Harout wrote:Though this was mentioned many many times, but I think it is worthy to mention it one more time on a separate thread:
If you shoot RAW then it would be very wise to adjust the "Creative Style" to "Portrait" with the contrast setting down to minimum (i.e. -3) and you'll experience a viewfinder with much more details in shady areas of a very contrasty scene.
This is definite with the a77 (so with the a65 too), but have to try it with the a55 yet.

Yes, doing all of that is very helpful. Something else I do with my Olympus E-M5 is use the Gradation control. The Gradation control is a curves tool that has 4 settings: Low Key, High Key, Normal, and Auto. Setting it to Low Key further reduces contrast. It seems like the Auto setting is similar to the Sony DRO+ control because this is what it says in the manual:

Divides the image into detailed regions and adjusts the brightness separately for each region. This is effective for images with areas of large contrast in which the whites appear too bright or the blacks appear too dark.

Rather than use the Low Key setting I have mine set to Auto. On another forum when the A55 was new I suggested all of these settings and also that using DRO or DRO+ would probably help the EVF if you shoot raw. For those of you who have a Sony EVF you might see if DRO/DRO+ helps the EVF display because I have never tried it and don't have a Sony.

I also set Saturation to the minimum. This helps a tiny bit in reducing blowouts in the EVF and also makes the histogram and highlight/shadows blinkies a bit more accurate reflection of what is in the raw file.

Since I shoot raw I don't care what the settings do to a jpeg, I just want the EVF to be as useful as possible.

Thanks for the input, Henry, I'll try that (if I understood it correctly) in the morning.

Doc, to be clear, I have my E-M5 set to the following:

1. Picture Style set to Portrait.
2. Contrast set to minimum.
3. Saturation set to minimum.
4. Gradation set to Auto.

The Sony equivalents, I think, are:

1. Creative Style set to Portrait.
2. Contrast set to minimum.
3. Saturation set to minimum.
4. DRO+.

Let me know what you think.

I agree with you dear Dr..
Me too, when I'm photographing with NEX-7 in RAW mode, I have found to select NEUTRAL style and then to give all setting a -3 flattens the scene in the viewfinder. So dark areas and brigth one show better detail.

It appears I have lots of testing to do third thing in the morning (well, first is watering my garden, then some physical activities).

Dr. Harout wrote:It appears I have lots of testing to do third thing in the morning (well, first is watering my garden, then some physical activities).

When you have a chance I would like to hear your thoughts about it.

bakubo wrote: When you have a chance I would like to hear your thoughts about it.

On the a77 the portrait mode is a tad better than the standard option with contrast to minimum.
DRO had no tangible effect, at least that I could feel.
Of course these are subjective issues and could change with light quality and objects color.
Maybe I have to try yet in very contrasty scenes?
Or should I use a black clothing covering myself (like old view cameras) so that ambient light doesn't affect my sight (after all under strong sunlight you wait till you adapt to the EVF at first view).
Anyway, I'm content with the portrait mode (in summer, at least).

The way I did it was to point at a contrasty view and make adjustments to see how it affected the display. Using portrait mode opened up the shadows a bit and put a bit more detail in blown highlights and reducing contrast helped a bit more. Then I tried the various gradation settings and could see that it helped even more. Putting the camera on a tripod as you do this makes it even easier to see what happens to the display as you change the jpeg settings. Reducing saturation didn't make much of a change, but when shooting raw the histogram is actually of the jpeg so reducing saturation along with the other stuff helps make the jpeg a somewhat more accurate reflection of what is in the raw file.