Part 2 of my Canon R7 blog summarizes my work with the camera on shore and ocean birds in southern California. I came away from this trip even more enthusiastic about this camera compared to my old 90D. In short, the R7 is extremely responsive and fast. This was especially noticeable when photographing birds in flight, something I have been itching to test out with the R7. The camera was able to instantly lock onto a pelican in flight, even if the bird wasn’t initially in the focal plane, and maintain focus for the duration.

This trip was a great test of the R7 due to challenging conditions including heavy rain squalls, sea spray and breaking waves, rapidly changing light, and some challenging bird species. I primarily captured Black Turnstones, Least Sandpipers, Sanderling, Whimbrel, Black Oystercatchers, Elegant Terns and Brown Pelicans (the latter two mainly in flight). I quickly adjusted to the conditions and used these settings:

For shorebirds, not in flight, but moving rapidly around the sandbars, and in good light (no flash):

Whole area autofocus

Servo

High speed drive

Tv mode, with a shutter speed of 1/1000 or faster

f5.6

Auto ISO

Animal capture on

Eye detection on

IS enabled

Handheld

This worked very well the majority of the time. My priority here was high shutter speed, as the birds were constantly moving. I did experience rapidly changing backlight for some of my subjects, like a Red Phalarope (a new bird for me, blown in by a huge storm that week). The bird would move from a darker, sandy background to a bright ocean background, and back again. I had to constantly change exposure compensation and used the Q screen for this. However, after my trip I decided to customize the AF-ON back-button to be a quick route to the feature named HOLDING DOWN ALLOWS EXPOSURE COMPENSATION TO BE SET WITH MAIN DIAL. This will allow me to change exposure compensation quickly within the viewfinder, using thumb and forefinger, without having to bounce between viewfinder and rear screen. I am not a big fan of using buttons, preferring to primarily use the screens, but I think this button customization will be beneficial. By the way, as I have mentioned earlier, a huge advantage of mirrorless over DSLR is the live viewfinder. With the phalarope, the background changed constantly from dark to bright. Since the viewfinder is displaying what the final image will look like, any backlighting will be obvious before you take the shot. This means you can adjust exposure compensation before taking the shot. This is of course not possible with the optical viewfinder of a DSLR.

Using Tv mode with Auto ISO meant the only variable was exposure compensation. Everything else was taken care of by the camera. This was critical when working with a tiny Least Sandpiper, for example, feeding and running around constantly, barely stopping for even a second. Eye detection worked very well, though it did get confused often, electing to home in on a wing feather, for example. This usually occurred when the bird turned away, as of course the eye was less visible to the camera. When focus shifted from the eye, I depressed the shutter button halfway, and re-pressed again to reinitiate autofocus, and the camera would usually then find the eye. Eye detection does work very well if the eye is clearly visible, and while it isn’t perfect, the key is that I got far more sharp shots than with my 90D. At the end of the day, that’s all that matters—the R7 is better. Also, the point here is that you still need to be a patient and technical photographer to get good shots. I wouldn’t want a camera that literally did everything for me. A good degree of skill is still required, even with subject tracking and eye detection technologies. On cloudy, rainy days I was forced to use flash on some shots. Here, I still used Tv mode, but the maximum shutter speed was the flash sync speed, 1/250 second. I had the weatherproof adapter for the 580EXII shipped to my hotel. It’s a small piece that seals the base of the flash, much needed on this trip with all the rain. The 580EXII will still work without the adapter (as with the Varied Thrush shots in an earlier blog) but it won’t be weather-sealed. Due to the recycle rate of the flash, I lowered the drive speed to low-speed continuous. For head shots, I switched to Av mode, using f-stops of 9 or 11, as depth of field was a priority, ensuring that the entire head and bill were in focus.

My only mammal was a sea lion, basking in the sun and getting splashed with white surf. I wanted to get a shot when a wave splashed around him. Servo mode caused the R7 to sometimes move focus from the sea lion to the surf, as it would refocus on the white surf in the foreground. I got around this by first focusing on the head, then switching to manual focus and taking the shot when the wave broke. In retrospect, I could have also switched to Spot autofocus, as Whole area autofocus was covering the entire sensor, so of course the surf sometimes pulled focus away from the sea lion. I also found that subject detection did not recognize the sea lion, which makes sense as the R7 as far as I know has been trained with dogs, cats, and birds only. I turned subject detection off in any case.

Pelicans were an excellent way to practice bird in flight photography with the R7. I used the following settings:

Whole area autofocus

Servo

High speed drive

Tv mode, with a shutter speed of 1/2000, or with cloudy skies, 1/1250 f5.6

Auto ISO

Animal capture on

Eye detection off. Eye detection doesn’t really help for birds in flight, as typically a bird in flight is far enough away that getting the head in focus is enough. I was also concerned that it might slow down autofocus.

IS disabled

Handheld

I was truly impressed with the R7 for birds in flight. It was incredibly fast and responsive, locking focus instantly, even if the bird was initially not even close to the plane of focus. It made my BIF sessions so relaxing, as I was able to really enjoy the birds, and not be stressed about missing shots. A few sessions with pelicans and terns in flight really convinced me that I absolutely made the right decision to switch from my 90D to the R7. It has taken some time and practice to get used to the camera, but it has been 100% worth it.

So far, I have worked in Av and Tv modes, but in researching Fv mode, it seems very appealing. In looking at all my shots from this trip, I found a Least Sandpiper shot where I was shooting very close to the bird. I was using flash in low light, and in Tv mode the shutter speed was 1/250 (the maximum sync speed), f5.6 and with Auto ISO the camera chose ISO 125 . Since I was so close, depth of field was a little shallower than I wanted. I would have rather had a smaller f-stop, at the expense of higher ISO. Had I been in Fv mode, I could have forced f9, for example, with a shutter forced at 1/250, and Auto ISO would have bumped up the ISO to accommodate. Next step is for me to try out Fv mode. I am over 4 weeks in using the R7, but still lots to learn!