760D impressions

Phil Endecott wrote:

Continued....

The "no flash" auto mode was no use for this photo, though; it wanted to focus on the grille in the foreground. And I can't change the focus point in that auto mode. So I changed to "P" and selected a single centre focus point - which happens to be what my 400D was set to for most of the last decade!

I have to wonder how useful 19 focus points are, to be honest. In this image the bee is right in the middle, but it has chosen to focus on something a bit closer.

Probably the autofocus mode you are forced to use in green square mode as in my other reply. You need to get out of green square mode and take control of camera settings yo get exactly what you want. The camera cannot read your mind!

Low light performance, though, is very impressive. This statue was very dark; so dark that I had trouble composing the image, and didn't expect a usable result. But it's great.

So this morning I decided to try something a bit different; the tour of Britain cycle race was passing the end of my street. I'll say straight away that this is absolutely not the sort of photography that I ever do! (Or ever plan to do, frankly). So it's really only a test of whether the camera's auto features can "do the right thing" in the hands of a naive user.

Cycle races are really parades of motorbikes and cars, with about ten seconds of blink-or-you-miss-it cyclists in the middle. The camera seemed to do a good job of the preceding and following motorbikes:

Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the cyclists. In this one, it has chosen to focus on something:

In this one though, despite there being less confusion of different depths to chose between, it has failed to do the right thing entirely:

If this had been more than just a test of a new camera I could have quite upset by how bad that one is.

Perhaps the significant difference between the motorbike and the cyclist photos is that I zoomed in more for the latter.

So in summary, I'm happy with my purchase and especially with the great low-light performance. But I continue to find that the "auto" modes are not useful to me, and wonder about the utility of having more than one central autofocus point.