New to Canon R7

Longtime (since 19881) Nikon user and I just switched to Canon R7.

Any good set-up and guide videos you all can recommend?  How about books?

I have downloaded the manual but I'd like a "Cliff Notes" version of the massive 963 page manual.

Thanks in advance,

Jeff

here is a general video, if you have a specific shooting style like BIF there are others too https://youtu.be/5BGgRgzCsQU

I downloaded the book by Nina Bailey "understanding the Canon eos r7".

It's in pdf format and I can recommend it if you know nothing about Canon R series cameras.

It taught me what I needed to know about using the R7 for stills. There's little on the video side.

She also has a pocket guide which might be better for you.

jeffnles1 wrote:

Longtime (since 19881) Nikon user and I just switched to Canon R7.

Any good set-up and guide videos you all can recommend? How about books?

I have downloaded the manual but I'd like a "Cliff Notes" version of the massive 963 page manual.

Thanks in advance,

Jeff

I can't type.  The area in bold should have been 1981.

Jeff

I like David Busch's books. Very thorough and detailed and easy to understand.

https://www.amazon.com/David-Buschs-Digital-Photography-Camera/dp/1681989492/ref=asc_df_1681989492/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=598269409894&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2227820383042126409&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1015332&hvtargid=pla-1684184657495&psc=1

Kent

jeffnles1 wrote:

Longtime (since 19881) Nikon user and I just switched to Canon R7.

Any good set-up and guide videos you all can recommend? How about books?

I have downloaded the manual but I'd like a "Cliff Notes" version of the massive 963 page manual.

Thanks in advance,

Jeff

Here’s some contrarian advice for you. Do not read or watch any setup or guide material for at least two weeks after receiving your camera. Become thoroughly familiar with it straight out of the box before you make any changes, and, above all, do not reflexively attempt to replicate previous settings from older cameras. Trust the camera until it gives you good reason not to..

to all who responded, thanks for the advice.  I've read all the responses so far and  will take them to heart.

Jeff

How do you want to shoot? 
There are so many approaches to photography, and so many different genres, that we’d overwhelm you if you don’t tell us more about how you want to use the camera.

Some photographers are very technical, and they want very minute control over all the exposure and focus settings. Others just want to shoot. Others are in-between. I don’t know how much knowledge you have about photography, so it’s hard to point you in the right direction.

If you’re an experienced photographer, what I’d say is that new cameras have sensors so good that you can choose both aperture and shutter speed, and the camera will set an ISO value which will give you a great result.

John Photo wrote:

I didn;t see what types of photography you intend to shoot. For instance, there are a lot of videos on setting up the R7 for wildlife. Just search here or google it.

thanks.  I apologize for not saying.  I am into nature and wildlife.   I don't do a lot of birds in flight.  I also do quite a bit of macro and close focus.  Thus the 100mm Macro as part of my kit.

Jeff

MarshallG wrote:

How do you want to shoot?
There are so many approaches to photography, and so many different genres, that we’d overwhelm you if you don’t tell us more about how you want to use the camera.

Some photographers are very technical, and they want very minute control over all the exposure and focus settings. Others just want to shoot. Others are in-between. I don’t know how much knowledge you have about photography, so it’s hard to point you in the right direction.

If you’re an experienced photographer, what I’d say is that new cameras have sensors so good that you can choose both aperture and shutter speed, and the camera will set an ISO value which will give you a great result.

Thanks.

I've been shooting nature, wildlife, landscapes since about 1980.  I've owned a lot of cameras in that timeframe but mostly Nikon.  I had a Minolta in the earliest days.  The camera system I just sold was based around Nikon D500.

Here is my Flickr Page to give an idea of what kind of stuff I typically shoot.

I'm not a "pro" but I'm also not a beginner.  Mainly what I'm looking for and have been finding online and in the manual (all 963 pages of its glory) is what the are the capabilities and what the different settings will do for me.  The challenging part is learning how setting "A" will impact setting "B".

Some of the video tutorials are geared toward someone who is buying a first camera.  Here is how you turn it on, here is how you change lenses and lengthy explanations about what aperture, ISO and shutter speed are.

Bottom line, I think I have one set up that will work and saved it to C1 so I can at least establish a baseline.  I'm sure before I settle on a "best" configuration for me I will have gone through several trial and error phases.

Jeff

Distinctly Average wrote:

jeffnles1 wrote:

MarshallG wrote:

How do you want to shoot?
There are so many approaches to photography, and so many different genres, that we’d overwhelm you if you don’t tell us more about how you want to use the camera.

Some photographers are very technical, and they want very minute control over all the exposure and focus settings. Others just want to shoot. Others are in-between. I don’t know how much knowledge you have about photography, so it’s hard to point you in the right direction.

If you’re an experienced photographer, what I’d say is that new cameras have sensors so good that you can choose both aperture and shutter speed, and the camera will set an ISO value which will give you a great result.

Thanks.

I've been shooting nature, wildlife, landscapes since about 1980. I've owned a lot of cameras in that timeframe but mostly Nikon. I had a Minolta in the earliest days. The camera system I just sold was based around Nikon D500.

Here is my Flickr Page to give an idea of what kind of stuff I typically shoot.

I'm not a "pro" but I'm also not a beginner. Mainly what I'm looking for and have been finding online and in the manual (all 963 pages of its glory) is what the are the capabilities and what the different settings will do for me. The challenging part is learning how setting "A" will impact setting "B".

Some of the video tutorials are geared toward someone who is buying a first camera. Here is how you turn it on, here is how you change lenses and lengthy explanations about what aperture, ISO and shutter speed are.

Bottom line, I think I have one set up that will work and saved it to C1 so I can at least establish a baseline. I'm sure before I settle on a "best" configuration for me I will have gone through several trial and error phases.

Jeff

Nice gallery there. Thanks for sharing that, some lovely shots.

Thank you.

Jeff

You’ll need to walk through these settings using a YouTube video or someone with some experience. Of course, you don’t just want to enter the settings, you need to understand them.

The Canon setting menus go from left to right. There are tabs with subgroups beneath them. The last tab is a Custom Menu tab, which you add individual items to for faster access.

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.

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.

That should get you started.

Distinctly Average wrote:

MarshallG wrote:

You’ll need to walk through these settings using a YouTube video or someone with some experience. Of course, you don’t just want to enter the settings, you need to understand them.

The Canon setting menus go from left to right. There are tabs with subgroups beneath them. The last tab is a Custom Menu tab, which you add individual items to for faster access.

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.

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.

That should get you started.

I think a lot still do use ES., It is more of a case of learning when it might fail. Even then it is sometimes better to have failures with some good shots as the tracking is easier in full ES, at least it is easier for me with many subjects.

Look, you can argue that every setting I recommended should be done the opposite way. Of course. Canon didn’t give the camera settings which don’t work. You can use the camera any way you want, that’s for sure. But for a first time setup I do not recommend electronic shutter, because it can produce very noticeable artifacts. Besides that, 30 fps is a lot of images to cull.

John Photo wrote:

MarshallG wrote:

Distinctly Average wrote:

MarshallG wrote:

You’ll need to walk through these settings using a YouTube video or someone with some experience. Of course, you don’t just want to enter the settings, you need to understand them.

The Canon setting menus go from left to right. There are tabs with subgroups beneath them. The last tab is a Custom Menu tab, which you add individual items to for faster access.

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.

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.

That should get you started.

I think a lot still do use ES., It is more of a case of learning when it might fail. Even then it is sometimes better to have failures with some good shots as the tracking is easier in full ES, at least it is easier for me with many subjects.

Look, you can argue that every setting I recommended should be done the opposite way. Of course. Canon didn’t give the camera settings which don’t work. You can use the camera any way you want, that’s for sure. But for a first time setup I do not recommend electronic shutter, because it can produce very noticeable artifacts. Besides that, 30 fps is a lot of images to cull.

Don't be so defensive. He made a valid point....as was your original suggestion.

But… the artifacts are very bad.  And I’ve seen some indoor wedding shoots with ES which came out horribly because lighting flicker made very bad, unfixable artifacts.  These cameras don’t have global shutters and ES simply won’t give consistently good results.

I read Nina Bailey’s book and she makes the same observations: ES has two advantages: Very high frame rate for sports/wildlife, and silent operation for indoor events, such as weddings.  But she points out that ES can produce unusable photos under both of those circumstances. So I will not recommend to a new owner to set the camera up like that and if someone claims otherwise, I will point out the pitfalls.

I think we will need to wait for an R7 Mark II or Mark III until we will have a full-time electronic shutter, and when we do, good chance there will no longer be a mechanical shutter.