New to Canon R7

MarshallG wrote:

The summary of what you want to do is set the camera to shoot RAW or cRAW images at a high frame rate with continuous autofocus. Canon calls continuous AF “Servo AF.” They just recently introduced a feature called “Continuous AF” and you do NOT want that; it’s for video and it will kill your battery.

?? If you select Continuous AF, the camera is always focusing whenever it's on.  As far as I know, it doesn't have anything specifically to do with video.  Apparently no one knows any use for it, and yes, it is a battery killer.

So you want Servo AF and you generally want to use Eye AF, configured to track Animals not Humans. So we tuck the “Human/Animal/Objects” setting into the Custom Menu area, in case you want to photograph a human.

There is an AF menu area which lets you configure an AF “Case.” This takes some time to set up and get comfy with; it pertains to how “sticky” the autofocus is on a subject and whether it tries to guess where the subject will go next. Long discussion possible there…

With the camera set for Eye Detection AF, what most action photographers do is reconfigure the Shutter release button so that its half-press is only a Meter On, and NOT Meter/AF On. There is an AF-On button at the top back which you’ll hold down to start and stop Autofocus. And there’s a menu where you configure all that.

Next to the AF-ON button there is a * button, and you’ll configure that button as a custom AF-ON which uses object detection instead of Eye Detection. Let’s say you’re in the forest and you see a pretty flower. Your camera won’t focus on it correctly because the flower does not have any eyes to detect. So you nudge your thumb over to the * button, hold it, and standard AF starts up, like your old Nikon, without the Eye Detection.

One other thing: For the very fastest frame rate, and silent shooting, you can configure the camera for fully electronic shutter. Most people don’t use this mode, because on R7 it produces rolling shutter effects which distort fast-moving wings and legs. Instead, set up Electronic First Curtain Shutter, which is electronic shutter to start the exposure but a shutter curtain ends the exposure, so no motion is recording to the sensor while the camera reads out the sensor. This is another item I keep in the Custom Menu, in case I want a perfectly silent shutter.

The second shutter curtain can impart a shock to the camera, however.  Some people advise not using the second-curtain shutter with highest frame rates and slow shutter speeds, but you wouldn't do that anyway, would you?  (Shutter blades can shake long telephotos, or some, mostly inexpensive zoom lenses with IS--even if IS is turned off.)  (Hopefully we don't get into a long discussion about this, and no one starts bashing.  Shutter shock is also known in the Nikon world.)