Lens Quality
While I was playing around with the settings above, I was focusing around my room and noticed the camera would get lost a lot and start hunting - it didn’t seem to be metering some of the time, at least that is what I assume because when it did go, the screen (image from the sensor, not the whole display) lightens up for a moment just before it would focus whereas when it did not succeed the screen never brightened up. I had the RF-S 18-45mm attached so on a hunch I switched over to the RF 50mm and it had a much higher success rate.
My room has quite a lot of stuff in it - a visually busy environment - so it would be easy to miss judge the target and/or catch a shadow and get a bad sample I suppose, even on spot AF. It’s perhaps 3.3m x 3.3m room and lit by one 60W equivalent LED bulb in a dome fixture… ideal lighting it is not.
The wider aperture & larger actual diameter pay off even before you fire the shutter!
Using a Tripod
To quote from the Where You Are photos here as it is a better topic to discuss…
That is a really nice shot. The 1 second exposure time reminded me of something I read. When researching the cameras and lenses, I had come across Ken Rockwell’s site which seems to be the best for straight technical data & details out of some of the review sites. I saw a large sum of the internet’s other photographers are not of fan of him for always using the same backyard for lens testing and his art style - but that is another story. The point is getting multiple opinions matter!
So, to tripods - Ken is apparently quite against the tripod in most general use cases and talks about learning to shoot hand-held most of the time. Even with my limited skillset I found that idea a bit strange, unless you are trying to challenge yourself to not use it - like not carrying around every focal range of lens, and instead moving yourself instead of the zoom ring all the time which was another point he made.
I am not so steady as to pull off 1 second without making some blur. Do you sort of have a cutoff for when you’ll use a tripod exposure wise? What about choosing the longer exposure vs. perhaps a higher ISO?
Software Updates
The update that just came out a week or so for the Canon connect app is way better so far. Much less finnicky with the WiFi connection it seems now. And it seems I can do GPS data with Bluetooth now as the old version would only do GPS data with WiFi which was not ideal. I also applied firmware 1.2 for the R10.
Control Rings
Speaking of software updates, the R10 does need some lens data for the RF lenses. My 18-45’s control ring does the expected and configured full-time manual focus. The 100-400 also does, but it has a dedicated focus ring and then a control ring on top of that which the R10 doesn’t seem to acknowledge. The 50mm’s control ring will not work for full-time manual focus, but will work in the “allow before one-shot mode” and “allow after one shot” mode (not the actual mode names - that’s just the actual result they give).
Camera Modes- Fv "Flex" Priority
Something that Canon was praised for in reviews that caught my attention was the Fv Flex-Priority mode, which I honestly love. All the settings, whichever auto and whichever manually set as you please. The only thing I wish it could have was the exposure meter (it is disabled as you can vary exposure compensation). I know I can use M Manual mode mostly the same, but the way the two dials work in Fv is just way better functionally - with one changing what setting is “active” and the other adjusting its value.