- Switching to Live View for photography: Press the Live View button to shift from viewfinder shooting to Live View mode. You hear a clicking noise and then the viewfinder goes dark and the monitor displays the live scene. By default, some shooting data appears as well, with the amount and type of information varying depending on your exposure mode and a few other settings. The figure shows the display as it appears in the Auto exposure mode when the default picture-taking settings are used for that mode.
The Live View button requires a firm push to turn the feature on and off. If nothing happens after one or two button presses, you may need to reset the Live View Shoot menu option to Enable. This is the default setting, but it's possible you or another user changed the setting to Disable at some point. Where you find the Live View Shoot option depends on your exposure mode; in the advanced modes (P, Tv, Av, and M), go to Shooting Menu 5, as shown on the left here. In other exposure modes, the option lives on Shooting Menu 1, as shown on the right.
To use Live View, make sure this menu option is set to Enable.Why would Canon give you the option to disable Live View functionality? Because it's easy to accidentally press the Live View button and switch to that mode when you don't really want to go there.
- Engaging Live View for movie recording: For movie-recording, simply moving the On/Off switch to the Movie mode setting (represented by the movie-camera symbol) engages Live View. You can't use the viewfinder in Movie mode, so the setting of the Live View Shoot menu option has no impact.
In Movie mode, pressing the Live View button starts and stops recording. To exit Movie mode, move the On/Off switch to On if you want to begin shooting stills or to Off if you're done shooting.