Canon EOS R Series Cameras

Tysonator said:
Mine is EF 70-300mm f4-5.6 L IS USM, and there is no Mkii version. I think you referring to the the non L 70-300 !

EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM​

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Ah yes my bad, I didn't spot the L in your details! Hmmm ok, I had thought about that one but was put off by the weight originally..
 
I shoot quite a variety of stuff - sport, birds, street, documentary, fine art - I am wondering what you set on the control ring on your RF lenses and for which type of shooting you use it for. I do BBF but have not yet set up the double back button focus linked to the tracking.
 
Chipper said:
I shoot quite a variety of stuff - sport, birds, street, documentary, fine art - I am wondering what you set on the control ring on your RF lenses and for which type of shooting you use it for. I do BBF but have not yet set up the double back button focus linked to the tracking.
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I’ve set the control ring to Exposure compensation as I didn’t have any other free buttons to use for that. I photograph wildlife and landscape.
 
stickytape said:
Ah yes my bad, I didn't spot the L in your details! Hmmm ok, I had thought about that one but was put off by the weight originally..
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LOL,..sorry i did not mean to put the 70-300Lin such big bold letters, I was suing my phone and fat fingers at play,...lol :)
 
I’ve yet to find a use for the control ring on the 100-500L it’s in such an awkward position that it makes it really quite useless to use quickly
 
Tysonator said:
Stickytape,
the EF 70-300L IS USM is a very sharp lens and fairly light for an L lens, and I mount this on my EOS 7Dii, R7 and Sony A6600 via sigma MC-11 adapter.
I have used for sports, portrait, and landscapes a very good all rounder zoomy lens
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Thank you! I’ll keep my eyes open.
 
Can anyone recommend a decent price high speed sync flash?

I am no flash expert in any way - I can just about put my 430ex into high sync mode but combined with the burst speed of my R5 most shots end up useless and it only gets a few a second.

It’s not for any professional application - just to be able to take some of my cat jumping really at around 1/1000s or greater so no fancy application for it hence the need for one that doesn’t cost the earth
 
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Check out Godox v860. Whether the recycle time will keep up depends on how much flash power you need.
 
Thanks Tim, I’ll do some research on it.

By the way it was meant to say cat above not car! Fat fingers an iPad and auto correct do not work well together!
 
No worries I guessed you meant cat. Rather than high speed sync another option would be to let the flash freeze the action by setting shutter speed below the max sync speed, and making sure there’s not to much ambient light.
 
A_S said:
Can anyone recommend a decent price high speed sync flash?

I am no flash expert in any way - I can just about put my 430ex into high sync mode but combined with the burst speed of my R5 most shots end up useless and it only gets a few a second.

It’s not for any professional application - just to be able to take some of my cat jumping really at around 1/1000s or greater so no fancy application for it hence the need for one that doesn’t cost the earth
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There’s a bit to unpack here.
You don’t need a fast shutter speed to freeze movement with flash. So long as the flash way overpowers the ambient, the <1000 of a sec flash illumination will freeze anything this side of a speeding bullet.
High speed sync, literally means the flash will sync at shutter speeds faster than sync speed (not that it will allow high speed bursts). Due to the way HSS works, it uses more power than just using flash sync speed.

Therefore it’s counter productive to what you’re wanting to achieve.

The other problem with speedlights right now is that cameras have just got ridiculously fast burst speeds. There’s no way that an AA powered speedlight can flash continuously to keep up except on the very lowest settings.

As Tim suggests, a LiOn powered speedlight recycles a bit faster, but even then, it’ll take some balancing.
 
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An explanation of high speed sync for anyone that needs it.

At sync speeds and below, the flash occurs when the shutter is completely open. So first curtain clears the sensor, flash fires, second curtain starts to close over the sensor.

At faster shutter speeds, the sensor isn’t completely exposed at any point. The shutter curtains both travel together with a slit between them.

So for ‘high speed sync’ the flash has to burn for the total length of time it takes the shutter curtains to make their journey.

So for a normal flash duration (1/125 shutter speed) the flash might burn for only 1/10,000 sec (right at the point there’s no curtain in the way), for ‘high speed’ at 1/1000 sec it’ll be burning 10 times longer.
 
While I’m on a roll (this is approximate and not a technically perfect description).

The miracle that is TTL flash:
When you press the shutter button, in the millisecond before the shutter opens, the camera tells the flash to send a tiny ‘test flash’ which it does, and when the light from that test flash hits your subject and bounces back to your camera, the camera measures the light returned. Then still before your shutter starts to open it calculates the subject distance and therefore the ‘correct’ flash output, which it then discharges at the point the shutter is fully open (or during curtain movement in HSS).

And if the above looks like a miracle, think about what happens in multi flash remote controlled setups; where different messages are sent to the different ‘groups’ of flashes all before the flashes fire for your exposure.
 
Phil V said:
An explanation of high speed sync for anyone that needs it.

At sync speeds and below, the flash occurs when the shutter is completely open. So first curtain clears the sensor, flash fires, second curtain starts to close over the sensor.

At faster shutter speeds, the sensor isn’t completely exposed at any point. The shutter curtains both travel together with a slit between them.

So for ‘high speed sync’ the flash has to burn for the total length of time it takes the shutter curtains to make their journey.

So for a normal flash duration (1/125 shutter speed) the flash might burn for only 1/10,000 sec (right at the point there’s no curtain in the way), for ‘high speed’ at 1/1000 sec it’ll be burning 10 times longer.
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Thanks Phil. Very helpful.
 
Phil V said:
There’s a bit to unpack here.
You don’t need a fast shutter speed to freeze movement with flash. So long as the flash way overpowers the ambient, the <1000 of a sec flash illumination will freeze anything this side of a speeding bullet.
High speed sync, literally means the flash will sync at shutter speeds faster than sync speed (not that it will allow high speed bursts). Due to the way HSS works, it uses more power than just using flash sync speed.

Therefore it’s counter productive to what you’re wanting to achieve.

The other problem with speedlights right now is that cameras have just got ridiculously fast burst speeds. There’s no way that an AA powered speedlight can flash continuously to keep up except on the very lowest settings.

As Tim suggests, a LiOn powered speedlight recycles a bit faster, but even then, it’ll take some balancing.
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This! 100%! It's amazing how many people (myself included) initially think HSS is for capturing high speed action and not what its actually designed for (using your flash in situations where the flash needs to match the speed of the shutter due to there being lots of ambient light, i.e direct sunlight)


I even had a bit of a run in with a semi famous you tuber who did a video on water drop photography and insisted you HAD to use HSS to capture water droplets and got a bit funny when I pointed out that's not what its for and he should have been reducing the flash power to reduce the flash duration, although that could possibly have been due to English not being his native language, anyway, I remember when I figured it out for myself and it was a bit of a eureka moment.... I'd been bumbling along for several years rinsing through AA's...
 
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Another thing to consider is 1st or 2nd curtain triggering.

So building on Phil’s excellent explanations above (thanks Phil); at normal synch speeds and lower (ie. when the shutter is fully open), the flash can be triggered when the 1st curtain reaches the end of its travel or just before the 2nd curtain starts its travel.

Default is for 1st curtain triggering and most of the time this works fine.

When photographing moving subjects, 2nd curtain triggering can give some interesting effects where ambient light captures a blurred image ‘trail’, with the much faster flash capturing a sharp image at the end of the exposure. 1st curtain flash triggering of the same subject will put the sharp image at the beginning of the blurred trail.
 
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Phil V said:
While I’m on a roll (this is approximate and not a technically perfect description).

The miracle that is TTL flash:
When you press the shutter button, in the millisecond before the shutter opens, the camera tells the flash to send a tiny ‘test flash’ which it does, and when the light from that test flash hits your subject and bounces back to your camera, the camera measures the light returned. Then still before your shutter starts to open it calculates the subject distance and therefore the ‘correct’ flash output, which it then discharges at the point the shutter is fully open (or during curtain movement in HSS).

And if the above looks like a miracle, think about what happens in multi flash remote controlled setups; where different messages are sent to the different ‘groups’ of flashes all before the flashes fire for your exposure.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this Phil, flash is something I've never dabled in but I'll have a read of this and have a mess around. Work has been pretty tough this week and got some other stuff to prepaire for next weekend so I'll get round to reading when my head is a little less full :p

edit: had a quick read

Are we saying that I can capture a fast moving jumping animal by using a slower shutter speed/longer exposure than I have been by utilising the flash/second curtain sync? would be useful as at the moment I'm having to ramp my ISO up and set very high speeds to deal with the movement of the cat.

This one was shot at 1/2500 of a second, ISO-1600 F2.8. To be honest the most difficult thing is the autofocus locking on initially then and tracking, so having shots exposed with the flash would help me monitor/learn/refine that as well. One of the toughest subjects I've ever tried to photo i must admit.

5G4A9480.jpg
 
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Phil V said:
Then still before your shutter starts to open it calculates the subject distance and therefore the ‘correct’ flash output, which it then discharges at the point the shutter is fully open
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I know pretty much nothing about TTL flash having used manual flash exclusively. How does the flash know what the right amount of light is? Is it based on the camera lightmeter's evaluation of the pre-flash (and camera aperture/ISO settings) or is it done in the flash head? Do things like exposure compensation work with it, or does one need to adjust the flash power if the camera gets it 'wrong'?
 
A_S said:
Thanks for this Phil, flash is something I've never dabled in but I'll have a read of this and have a mess around. Work has been pretty tough this week and got some other stuff to prepaire for next weekend so I'll get round to reading when my head is a little less full :p

edit: had a quick read

Are we saying that I can capture a fast moving jumping animal by using a slower shutter speed/longer exposure than I have been by utilising the flash/second curtain sync? would be useful as at the moment I'm having to ramp my ISO up and set very high speeds to deal with the movement of the cat.

This one was shot at 1/2500 of a second, ISO-1600 F2.8. To be honest the most difficult thing is the autofocus locking on initially then and tracking, so having shots exposed with the flash would help me monitor/learn/refine that as well. One of the toughest subjects I've ever tried to photo i must admit.

View attachment 384319
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No you don’t need 2nd curtain sync it’s a red herring except in very specific circumstances.
And any shutter speed below sync is usable. If you get too slow tho the ambient will start to interfere.

Here’s the experiment that shows the flash / ambient relationship.

Set the camera to M
Choose ISO 200, SS1/125, f5.6

Without flash, if you take a shot in the house at night, that’ll give you a completely black image.

With flash, keep the above settings, and just set the flash to ETTL ( this will give autoexposure for the flash even though the ambient exposure is Manual). If you now take an image, the exposure should be about ‘correct’*. The lighting was therefore 100% flash, and that exposure took as long as the flash was illuminated for. Which is probably faster than your highest shutter speed.

* if the flash exposure isn’t what you expect, then you use FEC (flash exposure compensation) either from the camera or flash.
 
Harlequin565 said:
I know pretty much nothing about TTL flash having used manual flash exclusively. How does the flash know what the right amount of light is? Is it based on the camera lightmeter's evaluation of the pre-flash (and camera aperture/ISO settings) or is it done in the flash head? Do things like exposure compensation work with it, or does one need to adjust the flash power if the camera gets it 'wrong'?
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The light is measured ‘through the lens’ by the camera meter. There’s likely a menu choice on your camera to choose eval or centre weighted metering for your flash (I tend to use centre weighted as it’s more predictable). It’s probably the flash that makes the actual calculation, based on the info from the camera meter. But I reserve the right to be wrong on that.
If the flash exposure isn’t what you want, then FEC should sort the flash part of the balance.

My general rule of thumb is that if the flash is the primary light source, I shoot in M and select the settings for the background effect I want. If the flash is supplemental, I’ll use my usual shooting settings and let the flash just fill (also aware of FEC and indeed exp comp for the ambient too.
 
A_S said:
Thanks for this Phil, flash is something I've never dabled in but I'll have a read of this and have a mess around. Work has been pretty tough this week and got some other stuff to prepaire for next weekend so I'll get round to reading when my head is a little less full :p

edit: had a quick read

Are we saying that I can capture a fast moving jumping animal by using a slower shutter speed/longer exposure than I have been by utilising the flash/second curtain sync? would be useful as at the moment I'm having to ramp my ISO up and set very high speeds to deal with the movement of the cat.

This one was shot at 1/2500 of a second, ISO-1600 F2.8. To be honest the most difficult thing is the autofocus locking on initially then and tracking, so having shots exposed with the flash would help me monitor/learn/refine that as well. One of the toughest subjects I've ever tried to photo i must admit.

View attachment 384319
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Follow @Phil V ’s instructions above. One more refinement - point the flash up and behind to bounce the light off the wall and ceiling to minimize the shadow on the far wall. Well, unless you like that shadow.
 
Thanks both

Got it. That makes really logical sense @Phil V because effectivly the flash becomes your shutter and the physical shutter speed is then irrelevent.

@TimHughes the flash was used pointing 45 degrees up (or more) with a diffuser.
 
A_S said:
Thanks both

Got it. That makes really logical sense @Phil V because effectivly the flash becomes your shutter and the physical shutter speed is then irrelevent.

@TimHughes the flash was used pointing 45 degrees up (or more) with a diffuser.
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The diffuser will throw some light forward - which is what creates that shadow.

If you'd rather not have the shadow, bin the diffuser and point the flash into the right angle between the wall and ceiling behind you as Tim says. This effectively lights your subject with a v large umbrella(ish)
 
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Thanks - flash is still a learning process to me.

I bought a hahnal captur which is a wireless device that allows me to fire a remote camera by pressing the shutter of my R5. It also acts as a remote hotshoe to fire a flash.

I tried playing around this eve by putting the flash on the remote camera with flash about 3m away from my r5 and firing the r5. Anything over about 1/200s I got a Shadow half way up the photo as if the flash didn’t last long enough to light up the whole image - which might be related to the discussion above - depending on the shutter speed the shadow was either 1/3 from the top of the screen, in the middle or closer to the bottom
 
A_S said:
Thanks - flash is still a learning process to me.

I bought a hahnal captur which is a wireless device that allows me to fire a remote camera by pressing the shutter of my R5. It also acts as a remote hotshoe to fire a flash.

I tried playing around this eve by putting the flash on the remote camera with flash about 3m away from my r5 and firing the r5. Anything over about 1/200s I got a Shadow half way up the photo as if the flash didn’t last long enough to light up the whole image - which might be related to the discussion above - depending on the shutter speed the shadow was either 1/3 from the top of the screen, in the middle or closer to the bottom
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If I’ve read this right there’s some confusion here.
Your remote trigger is designed to either fire a remote camera or fire an off camera flash.

If you mount a flash in the hot shoe of the remote camera, you’ll get a properly flash exposed image on that 2nd camera, as it’ll sync with the shutter.

But that flash won’t correctly illuminate the exposure for your primary camera because of the delay for the firing sequence of the remote camera.

And as a minor heads up, depending on a variety of factors, a wireless remote flash might need a stop slower shutter speed than x sync depending on the quality of the kit and battery state.
 
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A_S said:
Thanks - flash is still a learning process to me.

I bought a hahnal captur which is a wireless device that allows me to fire a remote camera by pressing the shutter of my R5. It also acts as a remote hotshoe to fire a flash.

I tried playing around this eve by putting the flash on the remote camera with flash about 3m away from my r5 and firing the r5. Anything over about 1/200s I got a Shadow half way up the photo as if the flash didn’t last long enough to light up the whole image - which might be related to the discussion above - depending on the shutter speed the shadow was either 1/3 from the top of the screen, in the middle or closer to the bottom
Click to expand...
hey there, the maximum shutter speed for the flash is 1/200th with the normal mechanical shutter. if the shutter speed is faster than this the whole sensor is not visible at the same time which is why you see the shadow.

i think it was discussed earlier, to freeze the action with the flash you don't need a fast shutter speed, the very short period the flash is illuminating the scene is doing that job. i would set it up as follows - aperture with a good depth of field to make sure the subject is in focus say f8 to start with, shutter speed say 1/60th, fix the focus, flash about 1/16th power so the flash duration is short and recycle time fast, then the balancing control is the ISO. start with ISO 100 and increase until you get a good exposure from only the flash. If there is too much ambient light, make the aperture smaller.
 
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I found the best explanation on how to freeze motion with a flash is to liken it to having a dark room with someone jumping around.

Your shutter speed has no effect on the light in the room, you'll always capture a dark image (unless you use a reallllly long exposure), so forget your shutter speed, it has no effect.

Flicking the light on and off is what illuminates the person jumping around and lets you see, just like with shutter speed, the quicker you can turn the light on and off the less movement there will be whilst that light is on. Remember the school discos where they used to have those pulsing flashing lights that made you feel like you were in star wars and made all your friends freeze mid boogey? It's just like that.


When you start looking at speedlights and strobes just think of them as you switching a light switch on and off in that dark room. The speed at which you can flick that light switch on and off is linked to the strength of the flash. At full power the light is flashed for longer. drop down the power and the length of the flash gets shorter.
 
Hi All just been sent an Email Firmware 1.8.1 is out for the R6.

You all might know already but just in case.
 
Hi all,
Saturday gone I went to an organised Bird of Prey shoot run by Sigma Imaging on a changing weather from sunny, cloud, strong wing and some rain armed with my R7.
I used Sigma 85mm f1.4 Art EF fit and 70-200 f2.8 Sport rf fit which was a heavy beast to hold. I used the lens both out side in the changing weather and a small studio which staff and couple of studio lights.
I must say the Sigma lens are very sharp and very well built.
The down side is the Canon EF to RF adapter is slow communicating the date from camera to lens and back again. I chatted to the Sigma man and he informed me that Canon are making very difficult for 3rd party lenses to work on the R mount cameras.
This is a real shame as the Simga 70-200 f2.8 Sport is a wonderful lenses and the 85 Art is nice lenses to use and I would not mind owning this lens ! !

For me I will stick with adapting my Canon L EF lenses to my R7 which work seamlessly. I do have a APSC sigma lens as my walk around lens a Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4 DC Macro OS HSM Contempoary. Which worked great on my EOS 7Dii, however it does pulse on the R7 !
The Sigma chap has e mailed me some instructions on how to get it to work in AI Servo AF mode with out pulsing. He informed he as my 17-70 is discontinued he had to go to the Sigma museum to get a copy on my lens to test on R camera ! ! ! lol
 
Tysonator said:
Hi all,
Saturday gone I went to an organised Bird of Prey shoot run by Sigma Imaging on a changing weather from sunny, cloud, strong wing and some rain armed with my R7.
I used Sigma 85mm f1.4 Art EF fit and 70-200 f2.8 Sport rf fit which was a heavy beast to hold. I used the lens both out side in the changing weather and a small studio which staff and couple of studio lights.
I must say the Sigma lens are very sharp and very well built.
The down side is the Canon EF to RF adapter is slow communicating the date from camera to lens and back again. I chatted to the Sigma man and he informed me that Canon are making very difficult for 3rd party lenses to work on the R mount cameras.
This is a real shame as the Simga 70-200 f2.8 Sport is a wonderful lenses and the 85 Art is nice lenses to use and I would not mind owning this lens ! !

For me I will stick with adapting my Canon L EF lenses to my R7 which work seamlessly. I do have a APSC sigma lens as my walk around lens a Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4 DC Macro OS HSM Contempoary. Which worked great on my EOS 7Dii, however it does pulse on the R7 !
The Sigma chap has e mailed me some instructions on how to get it to work in AI Servo AF mode with out pulsing. He informed he as my 17-70 is discontinued he had to go to the Sigma museum to get a copy on my lens to test on R camera ! ! ! lol
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Whilst the Sigma rep is correct re Canon making it difficult for native R mount 3rd party lenses.
I’ve never heard anyone suggest that a non Canon lens works slower via the adaptor. I have Canon, Tamron and Sigma lenses and they all work perfectly.
 
Especially not as it's essentially an extension tube with near as damn it pass through conductors.
 
Hi,
what is the best way to convert R7 RAW files to DNG in order to import them into LightRoom Classic Vr 8.1.
I have tried Canons DPP and there is no option to convert to DNG only tiff &j JPG !
I have also tried Adobe DNG and it can not even see the R7 RAW files !

Many thanks

T
 
Phil V said:
If I’ve read this right there’s some confusion here.
Your remote trigger is designed to either fire a remote camera or fire an off camera flash.

If you mount a flash in the hot shoe of the remote camera, you’ll get a properly flash exposed image on that 2nd camera, as it’ll sync with the shutter.

But that flash won’t correctly illuminate the exposure for your primary camera because of the delay for the firing sequence of the remote camera.

And as a minor heads up, depending on a variety of factors, a wireless remote flash might need a stop slower shutter speed than x sync depending on the quality of the kit and battery state.
Click to expand...

@Phil V @TimHughes

Thank you for the explinations. As with last week work has been a bit crazy so not been on here much to read/respond and test - but you hit the nail on the head there phil. I had the remote camera firing and the flash controlled by the remote camera. I did't think of the delay if I am honest. Seems obvious now.

Will do some testing with the flash Tim. If I was to set the flash speed higher - say 1/60 would that have the effect of freezing the action more? would it be the same effect as having a 1/60s exposure under non flash conditions?
 
A_S said:
@Phil V @TimHughes

Thank you for the explinations. As with last week work has been a bit crazy so not been on here much to read/respond and test - but you hit the nail on the head there phil. I had the remote camera firing and the flash controlled by the remote camera. I did't think of the delay if I am honest. Seems obvious now.

Will do some testing with the flash Tim. If I was to set the flash speed higher - say 1/60 would that have the effect of freezing the action more? would it be the same effect as having a 1/60s exposure under non flash conditions?
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Hi Andrew, to clarify 1/60 is a suggested shutter speed. Flash speed is fixed by the flash you are using. With flash, you can think of it as taking two photos at once that share the same aperture and ISO:
- first image with the ambient light in the scene. with the selected ISO you can make it brighter or darker by changing the shutter speed
- second image with the light from the flash. as the flash duration is fast it will freeze the subject it illuminates
 
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