Hoka Hey wrote:
Hi Jeff,
I see that this is your first post. Welcome to the forum!
Thank you kindly Hoka. I'm happy to join, participate, and share.
Sorry that you are having difficulty. Much of it may be from the switch form a DSLR to mirrorless.
Yeah, I believe that may be true, but I'm very open minded and a quick learner (or at least I use to be :)). Ultimately, I'm optimistic that things will work out, and I do respect the fact that much of my wavering experiences may boil down to a combination of user techniques and camera settings that were (unknowingly) conflicting with each other when put into operation. On the technology side, working with a different set of technical limitations that I was unaware of until this point may have also played a part as well. I've purchased an extended warranty for my camera, so if the hardware proves to be an issue, I'll have the angle covered too. Bottom line, I've learned a lot from all this and the forum feedback.
Do not get hung up on TN's videos. They are mostly clickbait. He is really great at faking sincerity and acting the expert. That's how he makes his living and he's quite good at it. It's mostly entertainment.
Based on a lot of the issues you bring up, I'd suggest that you reset your camera to default setting and start again.
I think I will, because a lot of people are introducing me to various settings that can apparently cause conflicts with other settings, or technique approaches. In fairness, I suppose this camera was created with a lot of different types of users in mind, so perhaps by chance I started doing product photography with flash and I just couldn't get things to work as intuitively as they worked for me before. I thought I'd start with something simple and stationary before jumping into a full blown wedding or a dojo full of ninjas.
Here are solutions for your issues:
1. I was albe to replicate your issue using the EF Macro 100 2.8 IS on the R3 using Spot AF One Shot AF.
You have set the AF3 Lens drive when AF impossible to "Off." Set this to "ON."
Yes, this was an issue, and it helped somewhat. I believe the default setting on the R3 is set to "on", but in my case my macro lens kept moving endlessly without achieving focus. So, I thought I'd try it in the "off" mode, and that just locked things up big time (to save battery power as one benefit I suppose, or a clever way for the Camera to tell me to shop what I am doing because my action will be futile for it to process). As a side note, I have noticed it actually doing that in a cool kind of way when I purposefully tried to shoot things with impossible settings. But, in all of this, that was not the case, I was literally trying to photograph very simple things with more than enough light.
2. The only way that I could replicate this complaint was any attempting to focus at less than the Minimum Focusing Distance or by trying to focus on a subject that had not definition like a painted wall without any definition or by trying to focus on a vertical line.
There is not solution for trying to focus on a subject without any contrast. You have to have some contrast in the image for the camera to focus on.
- Yeah, I learned this the hard way, and that's exactly what was happening. I was literally trying to photograph long horizontal shapes with low contrast (i.e., the horizontal petals on a white daisy in front of a red rose; a pencil on my desk; the degrees on my wall by point focusing on the frame edge (all having horizontal lines and definition)). All of that stuff just proved incredibly difficult. The R3 just choked on it, then I did that "camera tilt" trick you and TN mentioned, and it worked instantly. I also just tried shooting those things in a vertical orientation, and it also worked immediately. So, it would appear I need to think A LOT more about contrast and lines in a way that I never consciously did before. The last time I bought a camera was 2012, and my 1Dx never had a problem with the simple stuff I was starting off with over the past few days.
Likewise, there is not solution for trying to focus inside the MFD.
Totally agree, and I was not operating in that space.
If you are trying to focus on something that only consists of horizontal lines turn your camera to the side. This is typical in mirrorless cameras. I can't think of this ever being an issue in real world shooting. It is very rare to have a moving subject made up of entirely horizontal Lines and if the subject is not moving, you can tweak the manual focus to get the camera in focus.
Thank you and agree. Just by chance I was shooting things that were not moving and had long long, horizontal shapes (i.e, the pedals on a daisy)
3. Focusing on the background and staying there is typical for Mirrorless cameras. The R3 is the best that I have shot for not doing that.
The solution is to use Servo AF and Whole Area AF. Also set a back button to do spot AF. If the camera goes to the background or the wrong target, you can toggle the half press of the shutter button and that will often bring the focus back. If toggling the half press of the shutter button doesn't work, then use the back button spot AF on your target and it will correct immediately.
Yes, this approach may be the silver arrow. For the past decade, I was mostly a "single point, one shot" shooter. I've never had a problem with that approach or my timing. With a bit of practice, and a lot of trust, I think I can get to the point of relying more exclusively on the servo, which I am not accustomed to using. There were many reasons why I bought the R3, and nothing else before it. One of my reasons was simply the form factor. I liked how it feels and fits in my hand. The other was also the incredible responsiveness I sensed when pushing the shutter button. Hard to explain, but man it drove me nuts trying other camera's over the past decade that were not as fast as my 1Dx shutter button. I just couldn't do it. I recall using a 6D Mark II a few times, and I had to actually speed up my anticipatory reaction time so that I would not miss the timing of a shot I could see about to happen. But I digress, and simply wish to note that I was successful (probably lucky) in getting by without servo despite my older camera being able to do it well too.
4. I can't replicate this. Call Canon support. They are exceptionally helpful. Canon has some of the best phone support I know of.
5. I can't replicate this. The Eye Control AF works for me the few times that I've used it.
My wife also experienced this too, so I will give them a call.
The battery life with the R3 is amazing. I regularly shoot thousands of images on one battery. If you are only getting 450 images on a battery, something is very wrong. One thing that might help is setting AF3 Preview AF to Disable.
Yes, I did shut that feature off, and it was draining things fast. I was wondering when I would ever use that feature? Perhaps its more a video thing, which I'm not into.
I'm using the viewfinder almost exclusively, and I've been told this approach drains more power. And, I haven't been bursting anything yet, so that might partially explain why my my counts are lower. As an aside, the default setting on my R3 was set to H+, and my very first shot with the camera (which I wanted to make memorable by focusing on my wife and new baby) literally bursted out 28 photos in an instant...LOL...it was ridiculously fast. In fact, it was so fast that I didn't even know I had taken that many pictures until I pushed the review button and saw what had been captured. When it comes to people, I generally have zero focusing issues. With two exceptions: one was trying to photograph someone in front of Christmas lights with changing colours (apparently that's another issue I need to now know about) and the other was one person standing behind another. In both cases, I was unable to focus on the foreground, so I'll slow down to figure that out from all the awesome advice I've received.
Take some time to get used to your new camera. I've shot tens of thousands of images with R3, all in Electronic shutter, and it has the best AF that I have ever seen.
Of course there is always the possibility that mirrorless is just not for you. That's OK too.
Thanks a lot for your time and input. I really do appreciate it.
Good luck and have fun.
I believe I will, and this camera is indeed a wonderful tool once it nails a focus. From some of the posts I've read on my thread, I can't help but feel some people may have thought I was bashing Canon, or that I had some kind of thoughtless anxiety attack. The simple reality was my camera was "not working" despite my having read the manual and not understanding why. I'm still a bit concerned there may be some hardware issues at play, but I now have an extended warranty for that, and perhaps it was also ignorance on my part that I didn't stop to question any of the practices or assumptions I had been subconsciously making about the inner workings of my camera gear over the past decade. But, boy oh boy, I'm now thinking about lines and contrast in ways I honestly never thought about before, so when the next time comes to photograph a daisy petal, I'll be more than ready for that.
