This blog is a journal day by day of my using the new Canon R7 for bird photography. I have been using Canon DSLRs since 2011, and the R7 is a significant learning curve. However, I have faith that it will be worth it. I will not be going into deep details about features and settings, rather giving some information that will be relevant for people switching from DSLR to mirrorless for bird and wildlife photography.

On days 1 and 2 I started out in the field, just having read the basics in the manual, and set up a few things. I'm using the EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM with the R7 adapter. I mainly played around with servo with some ducks, and it worked well. I then used one shot with some songbirds and had troubles with focus. The biggest difference between the R7 and the 90D is in autofocus. With the 90D, I never used servo. I primarily photograph songbirds, so I used one shot with single point autofocus, first focusing on the eye, recomposing, and then refocusing if the bird moved. I lost many shots this way by having to refocus after any movement. With the R7, the magic is that the camera takes control over autofocus, locking on the eye automatically, and tracking it wherever the bird moves through the viewfinder.

The big change with the R7 is giving in to the camera. I so much want to control everything, however if you do this, you will not be realizing the power of the technology. I am so used to controlling where to place the focus point. Now, when you use full frame autofocus, essentially the entire sensor is used as an autofocus area, not just a single point. With tracking and eye detection enabled, if the bird is in the viewfinder, the camera will instantly find the eye and lock on, whether the bird is stationary or moving around. You can then concentrate on clicking when the composition and pose is right. This is the huge advantage of the R7, but it certainly takes some adjustment.

I was afraid that the camera wouldn’t be responsive enough, but now into Day 4, it is proving itself to be. I have set up a controlled environment, with a branch perch, distant background and blind. The weather isn't great - completely overcast with low light and rain. I normally wouldn't be out in low light like this, but since I just got the camera, I wanted to set it up and practice with it regardless. However, it meant using some very high ISOs and low shutter speeds. These more challenging conditions have proven to be an even better test of the camera's performance. So far, almost all my songbird shots are coming out nice and sharp. The eye detect locks on instantly with no real lag, and faster than I would ever be able to focus on the eye manually. It’s not perfect, and it sometimes looks for the eye. However, even if the eye isn’t found immediately, I don’t think it has once ever failed to find the head, and once it does that the eye is found instantly.

Another big change for me is using servo now instead of one shot. On day 3, with the controlled home environment, I had the R7 set to one shot (with tracking and eye detect) and floundered a bit. Eye detect found the eye, but with a moving bird, I often lost focus. Now on day 4, I used servo exclusively and it made a huge difference. The camera stayed locked on the eye no matter what the bird did, unless of course the bird turned away from me and the eye was no longer visible. I am looking forward to working on more bird in flight photography, as I think the autofocus tech of the R7 will be great for that, and it’s a niche I haven’t really explored much to now.

I found a very nice ebook: Understanding the Canon EOS R7 Camera | eBook by Nina Bailey. Nina goes into great detail on using the R7 and makes some very valid points. One is that you need to let go of your old DSLR ways and really embrace and trust the new tech. I have taken this to heart, and I am essentially learning again from scratch, and not trying to make my R7 into a new 90D. A good example of this is the viewfinder. At first, it really annoyed me. My old optical viewfinder was “on” all the time, and what I saw with my eyes was what I saw through the viewfinder. It felt comfortable. The new electrical viewfinder needs to be activated essentially each time you look through it or begin a session (it goes to sleep). Also, being a screen means it doesn’t appear as natural to me. For these reasons, I turned on the optical viewfinder simulator, which supposedly makes the electrical viewfinder appear more like an optical one. But, as Nina states, you then lose one of the powerful benefits of the R7 viewfinder, which is that what you see is what the image will be recorded as. You will have a preview, for example, to exposure levels, blown out areas, etc. With my 90D, I would often take a shot, quickly look at it, and then make any adjustments for my follow-up shots. I am hoping now that this won’t be as necessary. Anyway, I promptly disabled the optical viewfinder simulator and now I am learning to adjust to the new style of viewfinder.

I thought initially I would be bouncing between one shot and servo, but as Nina points out, one shot should only be for completely static subjects like buildings (i.e., not birds). Any bird, even a roosting owl, might make some movement. Thus, I will probably be using servo exclusively. Servo also seems to enable the tracking functions better than one shot. I am happy about this, as its one less setting to have to jump between. Also, so far the whole area AF seems excellent. It makes the entire sensor the focus area instead of a point. As long as the bird is within the viewfinder, it will be subject to tracking, eye detection and thus autofocus. You still need to half-press the shutter button to lock that focus in, but once its locked on the eye, and as long as the shutter remains half-pressed, you will not lose focus. This is a huge step forward for me when compared to my old ways of working with the 90D using spot focus and one shot. Understandably, I am so far working with an ideal situation - an exposed branch with a distant background. I am sure one point AF and even one shot will be needed at some point. My hope is this will be an infrequent need.

The other great advantage of servo with tracking and eye detect is you no longer have to use back focus on servo. I never used back focus before, and I was not eager to start as I prefer using a single button (shutter) to control exposure, focus and shutter release. With the new eye detect and tracking systems, and using whole area AF, you can compose the shot however you want by letting the camera stay on the bird.

I spent day 3 and 4 in my controlled home setup under very dark, cloudy skies. I don’t normally shoot on dark days but did so anyway to learn the camera. Understandably, I had to really crank up the ISO, to >2500. Even then, I was working with a shutter speed of only around 1/250th with flash and tripod. This is of course slow for songbird photography. Regardless, I came away with some great shots, even though I was just testing the gear and playing around. The combo of servo + whole area AF + eye detect + animal tracking worked amazingly well. I’m sure this will be my go-to setup. I got some great Steller’s Jays, Varied Thrushes, Chestnut-backed Chickadees and juncos on the perch. Once I got a bird in the viewfinder, eye detect found the eye instantly 95% of the time, I then half-pressed the shutter and followed the bird around, shooting as it went. So relaxing. Anytime the bird moved, the autofocus would stay on the eye. The camera locked on the eye far faster than I could ever do it manually using point focus. I am very impressed after day 4.

I was worried about these high ISOs.  I am used to ISOs <640. I tested several ISOs and found that even at ISO 6400 good feather detail was preserved.  The background was definitely getting grainier with each step up. I still like to stay as low as possible, but the image quality is such that I may opt for higher ISOs now. 

I use fill in flash a lot, especially for songbirds.  It is so important when shooting in Vancouver, where 2/3 days are cloudy and/or rainy. I have tons of shots that would have been discarded had it not been for my flash. Since servo will be my go-to now, I was worried that my 580EXII would not be able to keep up with continuous shooting that servo is optimized for.  With some older AAs (perhaps close to end of life), I took 22 shots on low continuous drive mode.  The first 7 flashed - that to me is already good news, as I rarely shoot more than a few shots in a burst.  The next 15 shots included only 3 where the flash fired.  I then used a new set of AAs and shot 14 in a row with low speed continuous.  All 14 flashed.  Thus, my 580EXII seems to be fine for now.  There is a new R series flash coming in January 2023 that is supposed to have ridiculous recycle rates, but its $600 so for now I will continue using my current flash. Day 5 sees me back with my home setup with brighter light but still overcast. Today I stuck with yesterday's settings (servo, whole frame AF, tracking and eye detect on) and had really good success again. The battery is lasting at least 4 hours and that's with a lot of screen time as I check each image. One small hint which may seem obvious but nevertheless...when using exposure compensation, the electrical viewfinder really helps. With my 90D, the optical viewfinder meant that you had to review an image to really make sure the comp setting was right. Since the electrical viewfinder on the R7 mimics exactly what the image will be stored as, you can preview the exposure comp setting in the viewfinder. The trick for me was to ignore the background, be it too bright or too dark, and just concentrate on the bird. If the bird appears too bright, move exposure comp to the left. If it appears to dark, move exposure comp to the right, and just ignore what the background is doing.

I took a break on Day 6, but still studied Nina's book. On Day 7 and 8 I was able to get some nice shots of the Varied's in the rain. The light hasn't improved so I am still pushing the envelope with these shots, trying to capture a songbird with shutter speeds in the 1/125 range and ISOs above 2000. But despite these limitations, I still have some shots that I will post.