shooting mirroless with strobes:but ambient light kept dark in studio enviroment

[macti]

So far I´ve been shooting DSLR + portable strobes:
Through my optical viewfinder I can still see my subject at dim ambient light (usually some household tungsten bulbs).
To keep the ambient light competely down in exposure, I expose at around 1/100sec at 100iso.

I still have nex7 on my pre-oder list, but I wonder what I would see through the electronic Viewfinder(EVF) in a mirrorless camera,
if the ambient light is intentiously completly underexposed.
I guess, the EFV or LCD would be bitch dark; No way to see or focus the subject properly before firering the strobes.

Is there a way to get around it?

[Rob C]

So far I´ve been shooting DSLR + portable strobes:
Through my optical viewfinder I can still see my subject at dim ambient light (usually some household tungsten bulbs).
To keep the ambient light competely down in exposure, I expose at around 1/100sec at 100iso.

I still have nex7 on my pre-oder list, but I wonder what I would see through the electronic Viewfinder(EVF) in a mirrorless camera,
if the ambient light is intentiously completly underexposed.
I guess, the EFV or LCD would be bitch dark; No way to see or focus the subject properly before firering the strobes.

Is there a way to get around it?

For a start, you could raise your shutter speed if it synchs at a higher speed. Going to 250th sec makes a lot of difference to low ambient light registering or not as part of the exposure, and no difference at all to the electronic flash part of the exposure as long as the aperture isn't changed...

Rob C

[Ken Bennett]

Under those conditions, I set my EVF so it shows me the scene, rather than a strict interpretation of the "real" exposure. The EVF does a great job of showing detail under really crappy lighting conditions -- so dark that I would not be able to see anything through an optical viewfinder. As long as your flash exposure is good, I don't see a downside to this.

[macti]

Thanks k bennet:

I didn´t know, that you can set the EVF to "show the scene" instead of "real" exposure.

[Steve Weldon]

When you say studio and strobes, you think of strobes, modeling lights, manual camera settings.  If this is the case I don't see a problem with a dim viewfinder.

[Ken Bennett]

Thanks k bennet:

I didn´t know, that you can set the EVF to "show the scene" instead of "real" exposure.

As far as I can tell, that's the default - the EVF changes brightness as the scene changes, w/o any changes in my exposure settings. I do find with my GH2 that using the thumb button on AE/AF lock will also lock the EVF, so when I recompose the camera shows the actual exposure rather than changing the EVF to account for any difference in scene brightness. Helps when shooting with, say, a bright window behind the subject.