Camera body + eyepiece adapter - Smart Shooter 4 Image Preview Brightness (pre-purchase question)

Dear all,
I just bought a Canon EOS 550D body to make my first steps with a tethered photo camera (I’m quite expert with USB video cameras).

With the camera, came a free software, “Canon EOS Utility”. I can in fact take pictures on the PC, but there is an huge problem.

Please understand that I use the camera body without any objective, in manual mode, with an eyepiece adapter. The camera peeks into the microscope tube. So, “Canon EOS Utility” has no way to set, or know, the aperture - just ISO and exposure time.

Whichever the reason, both the full-image and the zoom preview are incredibly darker than the actual image that I capture (see attached image). In other words, the “live view” on screen does not give any useful information about the final result of the image capture.

If I set ISO and time to get a decent picture on the PC screen, the captured image image is terribly overexposed. On the other side, if I set ISO and time to get a decent picture, I can’t see it in the preview…

As a newbie, most probably I’m missing something…

Here comes the question: did someone use Smart Shooter 4 with just the camera body and a microscope, no objective attached? With Smart Shooter 4, does the live image match the look of the image captured even when the camera body is used without an objective attached??

Many thanks, excuse my bad English.

Cesare

Tests that I made with Canon EOS Utility demonstrated that it was my fault. It sufficed to select Av mode with the camera knob, and I got consistent previews.
My fault, then! Apparently, the problem was related with the M mode.

One thing to also check; in Smart Shooter, when live view is enabled, you also have control of the DOF (depth of field preview) function, just click the DOF checkbox to enable/disable this. This tells the camera to alter the aperture and can give a more accurate preview of the real exposure.

Also, the Capture window in Smart Shooter allows you to articially brighten the live view display. Look for this button at the top of the Capture window, it has a tooltop labelled “Live View Brightness”. This applies to boost to the brightness in the computer screen, without affecting any settings in the camera itself.