Plastic deformation of polycrystalline metals plays an important role in very different fields in technique. Formability as well as mechanical properties of metals and alloys exhibit a strong dependence of grain size and grain structure. Microstructural evolutions and crystallographic orientation rotation behaviour taking place during tensile deformation at room temperature were investigated in polycrystalline iron, nickel and copper. Specimens with grain sizes of 100m, 10m, 1m and 300nm were deformed in an in situ deformation stage installed in a scanning electron microscope that is equipped with an electron back scatter diffraction (EBSD) system. Variations in surface and grain boundary characteristics, such as surface deformation, misorientation and dislocation distribution, during the in situ deformation were analysed using EBSD. The orientation changes in individual grains were traced at three different deformation steps while the evolution of the surface was studied during the whole deformation process. Domains near grain boundaries show different orientation changes compared to the inner regions of grains. This was especially pronounced in samples with grains larger than 10m. At grain sizes smaller than 1m this difference between the near grain boundary region and the interior of grains disappear. In summary it could be shown that orientation changes in grains larger than 1m differ significantly from the behaviour in submicron and nanocrystalline materials.