R6 with EF 100-400mm II and TC EF 1.4x III for wildlife?

Distinctly Average wrote:

John Photo wrote:

Distinctly Average wrote:

Marco Nero wrote:

Distinctly Average wrote:

First of all, great write up and shots with the R6. I especially like the snake.

Thanks! I had to take the circular polarizer off for that shot because it was indoors inside a dark undercover display but in an illuminated tank. So reflections weren't a problem and the CPL filter was going to cut down on light too much... but the Eye-Detect couldn't spot the eyes on the snake and there was a queue of people trying to squeeze in there with me. With other reptiles I've had no problem. Even the eye of a tiny skink were easily tracked repeated when I was in the mountains and that eyeball had to be just 1.5mm wide. Same camera and lens of course.

AF issues on the R7 are not something I have experienced. I have used an R5 quite a bit and the R7 is as good most of the time. I’ve not had the lack of consistency some are reporting nor any issues with BIF or dragons in flight etc. I saw similar videos and comments online about the 7D, 7D2, 80D, 90D etc. In fact, when the R6 appeared there were videos showing AF problems with that too. I feel it is always the way when any new camera is released. A lot of it I put down to familiarity with a new camera. Plenty just don’t seem to give new cameras enough time. Having said that, the rolling shutter on the R7 really is an issue and I wonder if what some are seeing as AF issues are in fact distortion caused by the rolling shutter.

.
In this instance it's not something I deal with myself - but since I had considered buying an R7 recently I keep an eye out for posts on this recent camera. I'm on a few R-series groups on Facebook and a number of members recently (last week) posted examples of issues they were having with the EOS R7's AF and they posted links to their own web pages plus recent YouTube videos. Some are professionals and use this camera especially for the APS-C crop. I kept one of the links from a Photographer who said he wasn't going to be using his R7 for any critical photography as a result of recent misfocus issues. I'm always mindful that most problems tend to be 'user error related' but this one is compelling...
.
"Why the EOS-R7 won't be coming on Safari again"
"Sequence showing Canon R7 focus failure at a critical moment"
https://duncangroenewald.com/pages/galleryView.html?dataFile=blogs/blog-2022-11-01.json
.
Others have experienced the same. I'm not a birder so this isn't something I deal with often. The rolling shutter issue is of course a known problem for any camera with slow sensor readout so it's going to be a problem for any of us shooting fast moving subjects with Electronic Shutter instead of Mechanical Shutter. Fortunately I'm only occasionally using ES for sporting and try to be mindful of which drive mode to be using.
.
I definitely agree that people don't tend to give a lot of modern cameras the time to learn them properly. I am often surprised by the number of people who buy new cameras with features they don't quite understand, don't read their manuals and then jump online to complain about something that could be resolved with just a little online lurking or spending more time ironing out any bugs. Perhaps they panic? I still see people asking about R6 AF issues they might have and I've stopped replying for two reasons... one is that someone else can do it... and the other is that I know the R6 AF sytem needs to be primed with the correct settings before you can extract maximum results from it. But again, a simple YouTube video can often show people how to set up their gear these days.
.
On the flip side, I'm becoming a little less confident with Canon lately. Some of their mechanical designs are flawed (QC and Ergonomics related) and they do seem to be dropping the ball a bit these days with marketing. Have a look at that link above and let me know what your thoughts are because more than a few experienced and even professional wildlife photographers were making the same arguments online recently. He distinctly stated that the AF would switch repeatedly between the bird's eye and the washed out background - which seems unusual to me considering the shots. The ones that came out certainly looked sharp enough but the number of keepers was certainly low.

I watched that video when it came out and I wasn’t convinced. Currently there are also quite a few videos praising the AF. There does seem to be a bit of a pulsing issue with Sigma long lenses though and I have seen that on a friends setup.

I’ve been using the R7 daily since launch as I was lucky to get it on day 1. It has been a learning curve, and I did have the camera jumping to the background in low light on an owl. After a bit of fettling I had the BBF setup overriding the case setup in the AF menu. That was simply because I missed the detail setting when I had configured it. One I changed the case setting to be using the right one, the camera stuck like glue to the owls on every outing since.

Question for you: the change you ultimately made in your setup, the "detail setting" when you configured BBF, is it in the customization of the chosen button for BBF vs Case in the autofocus menus? I sometimes see the same issue you mentioned you initially had. Thanks.

The customisation was in the BBF detail. I think of the case settings as something you can call up in the BBF. So I set the features I want for each case, then request them via BBF. It is a great bit of design by Canon but they don’t explain it too well in the manual. In fact today I was in a hide discussing just this. My friends was complaining whatever he was setting in case 2, the camera was not behaving how he felt it should. That was because his BBF setting was calling up case 1. He went from frustrated to really happy.

So in AF I have these settings for Case 2.

When I first had BBF setup the detail page showed this. The line “Servo AF characteristics” was set to 1, which means that button is using case 1 instead of case 2. Not very well worded menu item I felt.

If you click in that it brings up another page which does make things clear, and it is there I select my desired case, 2 this time.

Hope that makes it clear.

Thank you. I think that explanation will be helpful. I'll look into it when I'm back with my cameras. I am going to check and see if the R6 is set the same way. Thanks again!