Cool Camera Tricks:
Canon Camera User Settings Revisited
Something other than another news post about some lens or camera that’s way out of any reasonable budget for a change. Since writing my original Camera user settings post, I’ve discovered I omitted an SLR as wells as many point and shoots that were capable of using camera user modes. The SLR is the venerable EOS 5D. In addition there’s a whole slew of point and shoots that support at least one custom mode. So many in fact I’m not even going to attempt to list them all. In addition since my first post, Canon has released two new bodies that support Camera User Settings, the EOS 50D and the EOS 5D Mark 2.
| Supported SLRs | ||
|---|---|---|
| Model | # presets | |
| EOS 5D | 1 | |
| EOS 5D Mark 2 | 3 | |
| EOS 40D | 3 | |
| EOS 50D | 2 | |
In addition I have been playing with ways to streamline the operation when working in the C modes. The problem that one inevitably runs into is the camera waking up and resetting back to the saved custom settings. In some instances this isn’t a problem, and actually has saved me from shooting something with misapplied exposure correction. But what happens when you change the ISO because the lighting conditions have changed. In that case you’re in trouble, if the camera goes to sleep when you wake it back up, you’re back in the wrong ISO. If you don’t let the camera go to sleep, you run your battery down more rapidly.
The solution I’ve found is a combination of both, geneally I set my custom modes up with a slightly longer sleep delay, like 2-8 minutes not 1 like I usually keep it at. The second solution was mapping a “My Menu” entry to the “Camera user setting” menu, This way if a change is temporary, such as a cloud obsecuring the sun, I can change for example the film speed, and as long as I’m still shooting inside the 8 minute window, my settings say just as I left them. If I foresee needing to say that way for any lenght of time, updating the settings is just 3 clicks away. One thing you gotta do is remember what settings you changed so you can set them back. The only thing that could possably make this any smoother would be the ability to save and restore the camera user settings though the EOS utility when the camera is connected to a computer.
