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Canon A590 IS Manual Focus Mode 'Disappears'

Started Jul 11, 2020 | Discussions
baumjwb
baumjwb New Member • Posts: 11
Canon A590 IS Manual Focus Mode 'Disappears'

I like taking macro photos of wildflowers with a tripod. All to frequently I find that after I've set everything up and while I'm waiting for a breeze to stop briefly the camera 'changes my mind for me' and leaves Manual Focus, forcing me to go back and reset all my parameters. It seems to correlate with a 'power saving' move that blacks out the LCD display. When I turn the display back on the only Manual options that seem to be available are 'macro' and 'normal' autofocus where the manual options available to set the shutter speed and aperture independently so that I need to rotate the Mode dial to get back to M with the manual focus option.

Is there a way to set up Manual Mode so that the focal distance, shutter speed, aperture are retained until I

a) shut down the camera or

b) change the Mode?

thanks

baumgrenze

Canon PowerShot A590 IS
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reyalp Regular Member • Posts: 201
Re: Canon A590 IS Manual Focus Mode 'Disappears'

baumjwb wrote:

Is there a way to set up Manual Mode so that the focal distance, shutter speed, aperture are retained until I

a) shut down the camera or

b) change the Mode?

These cameras do not retain the manual focus setting when you restart. As you've noticed, older cameras like the A590 also exit MF when the camera goes into display off power saving mode. There is no way to avoid this in the standard firmware.

You can use CHDK (https://chdk.fandom.com/wiki/CHDK) to enable manual focus mode and set focus distance on most cameras, but this is separate from the normal Canon UI and may not be convenient for you use case. You can also use CHDK to disable the power saving mode.

baumjwb
OP baumjwb New Member • Posts: 11
Re: Canon A590 IS Manual Focus Mode 'Disappears'

Thanks for confirming my observations and for pointing me to CHDK. I made a start at looking at it five years ago and got distracted by other projects. I will try to go back and look again. I'm tempted by the remote control possibility. Back when we all used film, I settled on Kodachrome 25. I had some battered cable releases for my OM-1 and then OM-4. I miss some of the features of those fine cameras.

thanks

baumgrenze

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