As a working professional photographer, it’s often the very practical camera settings I rely on time and again when taking commercial photos for clients.
Whether it’s photographing products or an artist’s paintings in my home studio, or a taking photos of a construction client’s newly installed kitchen-diner, it’s imperative that my photos are perfectly straight and square.
That’s to ensure that photos are both level (that’s the horizon, or horizontal elements in the frame) and ‘square on’ (so the sensor is parallel and vertical elements are straight). And to do that, you need to be able to see the digital spirit level on screen big and clear to the eye!
And this is why I prefer my trusty Canon EOS 5D Mark IV DSLR over the newer EOS R5. As one big benefit that my older 5D has over mirrorless cameras like the R5 is the larger full-screen digital level I can use on the LCD screen, compared to the tiny electronic level on the R5’s screen.
The DSLR's large electronic level fills the whole LCD screen, with the horizontal level the full-width of the screen, and vertical level clearly shown inside the circular guide – all against a black background, and nothing else on-screen to distract my eye.
So when I'm working with a tripod (which I do 100% when photos need be straight), with a quick few turns of the dials on my three-way Manfrotto head, I’m able to quickly line up the long horizontal line on screen so it’s green, and the vertical line so the camera is perfectly square to the product I’m shooting, or so the verticals for my architectural interiors are perfectly lined up.
To clarify, I’m not talking about the little / inferior digital level on-screen on the 5D Mark IV when it’s in Live View mode; I mean when you have the exposure and other info showing on the rear screen, then you press the Info button a couple of times to bring up the electronic level alone on screen!
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Compare this to the EOS R5, which has a far smaller digital level that is only available as an overlay on your scene when using the electronic viewfinder and you’re composing and focusing – and it's much harder to see and line up.
Plus, when you have all the other info on the R5 screen at the same time (histogram, shooting mode, white balance, exposure info, exposure level indicator and so on) you can hardly see the digital level to use it effectively.
Canon! Why not bring back the full-width digital level in a firmware update for future EOS R mirrorless cameras…
You might be interested in the best Canon cameras, along with the best Canon lenses for DSLRs and the best Canon RF lenses for mirrorless.
