EOS R TECH THREAD- Its time for others who will jump into canon Mirrorless bodies

TeamSpeed wrote in post #18988403
I am considering changing one of the direction pad arrows to be the drag AF toggle. So I have to hit a button to activate the drag feature, then hit it to lock it into place. I haven't decided if it is worth it yet or not.

And that is the reason why I always say people have to live and shoot with the R for a while--months, even--before they've really got it dialed in to the best way for them to use it.

I have lived with the M50 for several months and several band/rugby matches (which is basically a crop version of the R, has all the same features). With the smaller screen, I have had the misplaced AF point more often than with the R, thus why I haven't decided if I need to tie up a critical button for such a function. I have basically overwritten every button at this point other than the mode button to access or activate features I want. I still don't understand the need for a dedicated lock button that cannot be reprogrammed.

Right now I use absolute and the upper right quadrant setting for drag AF, which is what I gravitated toward on the M50. It has reduced the errant misplacement of the AF point this way.

squashed wrote in post #18988408
Yep ! And press the delete button and it pops right back to the middle.

Didn't know this, good!

I use the LCD to move the AF point/s around but set the arrow buttons to do that for colder weather. I set the magnify button to get the point/s back to centre.

I wonder how well those gloves with the touchscreen fingertips work in the cold for drag AF on the rear screen. I may have to go get a set to try it.

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #18988427
Didn't know this, good!

It's a programmable option, so you can set it to what you want. Digital Paradise has his set the way I do (right below your post) - the magnify button. Very handy, just click on it after moving the focus around and it's re-centered.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #18988466
I wonder how well those gloves with the touchscreen fingertips work in the cold for drag AF on the rear screen. I may have to go get a set to try it.

That is why I programmed the arrows as a back up

patrick j wrote in post #18988481
It's a programmable option, so you can set it to what you want. Digital Paradise has his set the way I do (right below your post) - the magnify button. Very handy, just click on it after moving the focus around and it's re-centered.

Ahhh.. old age and memory loss got me on this one. I had no idea I actually programmed this button when I set it up !

My Fb set up

Fv. Single point, One Shot

C1. Single point, AI Servo, High Speed Continuous (HSC)

C2. Zone AF, AI Servo, HCS

C3. Zone AF & Face Detect, AI Servo, HCS

C3. If I press the BBF it goes into zone AF and uses the entire screen. If I put my thumb in the LCD instead the orange ball comes up and I drag it around the screen to my desired focus area.

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digital paradise wrote in post #18988464
I use the LCD to move the AF point/s around but set the arrow buttons to do that for colder weather. I set the magnify button to get the point/s back to centre.

patrick j wrote in post #18988395
The option to drag that focus point around while looking through the view finder is why I haven't gone back to the back button focus way of doing things. I can just set that focus point on the thing I want to focus on instead of moving the camera around to get the focus on what I want and then doing the recompose thing. The one downside to the touch screen focus is every now and then I discover the focus point way down in the corner of the frame - oops, didn't mean to do that.

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I am a long time user and proponent of back button focus.

I only quoted two of you, but I have seen several people here talk about using the rear screen to select or drag focus points. . Ergonomically, I do not understand how this can work for the long lens "on the fly" situations that are so common to most of our shooting.

I need my left hand to be on the lens, so that I can zoom out as the subject (rapidly) approaches me as if flies or runs toward me. . So the left hand needs to be turning the lens barrel. . And even if it wasn't, I need the left hand on the lens to hold the lens up. . When using lenses like a 100-400mm or 150-600mm, with no tripod, most people need one hand on the camera and the other hand out along the lens barrel to hold the lens up.

So, one hand on the lens and the other hand holding the camera and operating two buttons simultaneously - the shutter button with the index finger and the back button with the thumb.

I do not understand how any of you are using the rear screen to adjust focus points if you are shooting rapidly moving subjects and trying to hold a long, heavy lens up. . Do you have a third hand or something? . LOL

Seriously, I do wonder how people are using the rear LCD display to focus if they are trying desperately to keep a rapidly moving subject centered just right in the viewfinder and also trying to hold a big heavy lens up and everything is happening so rapidly that if you take a split second to do anything else you will miss your shot altogether. . I just don't get it.

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Tom Reichner wrote in post #18988516
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I am a long time user and proponent of back button focus.

I only quoted two of you, but I have seen several people here talk about using the rear screen to select or drag focus points. . Ergonomically, I do not understand how this can work for the long lens "on the fly" situations that are so common to most of our shooting.

I need my left hand to be on the lens, so that I can zoom out as the subject (rapidly) approaches me as if flies or runs toward me. . So the left hand needs to be turning the lens barrel. . And even if it wasn't, I need the left hand on the lens to hold the lens up. . When using lenses like a 100-400mm or 150-600mm, with no tripod, most people need one hand on the camera and the other hand out along the lens barrel to hold the lens up.

So, one hand on the lens and the other hand holding the camera and operating two buttons simultaneously - the shutter button with the index finger and the back button with the thumb.

I do not understand how any of you are using the rear screen to adjust focus points if you are shooting rapidly moving subjects and trying to hold a long, heavy lens up. . Do you have a third hand or something? . LOL

Seriously, I do wonder how people are using the rear LCD display to focus if they are trying desperately to keep a rapidly moving subject centered just right in the viewfinder and also trying to hold a big heavy lens up and everything is happening so rapidly that if you take a split second to do anything else you will miss your shot altogether. . I just don't get it.

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The right thumb is moving the focus point. That's why we've gone back to using the shutter button to activate focus.

Of course, you can continue to do back-button focusing...moving the thumb from the screen to the rear focus button is still faster than moving the focus point the DSLR way and then trying to use the rear focus button. Yes, it's in a slightly different position, but it's not unusable.

RDKirk wrote in post #18988530
The right thumb is moving the focus point. That's why we've gone back to using the shutter button to activate focus.

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But my hand is not large enough for my index finger to be on the shutter button and the thumb to cover an LCD display ..... they are simply too far apart. . Plus, my face is pressed up against the back of the camera so that I can see clearly through the viewfinder.

And please don't suggest that I hold the camera out in front of me and look at a rear screen instead of through a viewfinder. . I don't have anywhere near the coordination to do that when things are zipping past me close by at 20 or 30 miles per hour. . When people suggest that, I get the feeling that they are not doing the same kind of photography that I do. . I look at their portfolios and see images of mostly still things, or things whose movements are predictable, like race cars going around a track or a bicyclist or whatever.

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I don’t move the AF point/s around while I’m shooting.

As for keeping my finger in the shutter you just slide your thumb on the LCD as far as is comfortable, lift it and place it at the original start point. Drag and lift.

With Face Detect you can’t do the drag and lift method because it picks the point as soon as you lift your thumb. However you don’t need to have your finger on the shutter for the start of that process.

I guess I should have called it Drag, Lift and Repeat. You can quickly get the AF point to any part of the EFV area.

Tom Reichner wrote in post #18988516
.... I have seen several people here talk about using the rear screen to select or drag focus points. .
Ergonomically, I do not understand how this can work for the long lens "on the fly" situations that are so common to most of our shooting.

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As a fellow birder and wildlife shooter,. and someone that has been experimenting a lot with the R and come to see the amazing usefulness of this technique, my opinion is that you are absolutely correct, the LCD AF point drag technique won't be useful for us in most of the situations we see.

That said, I COULD see it in some cases. (though I have not tried it in this sort of situation yet)
- Figure Bosque, or another such situation with large quantities of wildlife spread out in front of us giving us the opportunity to work from a tripod, with so much to offer we don;t know if we want wide sweeping vistas filled with wildlife, or to get in tight with the interactions of a pair, etc.. We can be more sanguine about getting shots, even take time to swap lenses (or go from one body to another)

I see these situations as actually similar to, for example, following specific dancer on a stage. Here I think with the right lens and tripod set up, the LCD af point selection trick would work very nicely.


As for being able to reach, you haven't picked up the R yet, so I think you can very well reach. It's all smaller than your 1D4 (or even a 30D-90D etc.) Also one of the settings is to limit the size of the area of the LCD you use, (similar to settings we have when using a graphics tablet, for those that know about this) reducing the amount of LCD area and amount of motion required to get the job done)