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The Canon 5D "C" Mode Gotcha
Oct 12, 2005
The following is an e-mail I received from Michael Tapes yesterday. It concerns a quite real design flaw in the new Custom Mode of the new Canon 5D. Since I am leaving tomorrow on an extended shoot in Asia, I am simply reprinting Michael's letter to me, as is, so that 5D owners are aware of the issue. Whether this is something that Canon chooses to address with a firmware update remains to be seen. – Michael Reichmann
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Michael,
The following has been brought to my attention by a friend, who like you and
I, recently purchased the 5D. Also like you and me he is very pleased with the
camera. I think thrilled would be more accurate. Because of the numbers of people
that will be buying this camera, I thought that it would be important for your
readers who now or shortly will own the 5D to be careful of the following"gotcha".
Both my friend (Mike Arst) and myself think it is quite a serious flaw that
will have people's heads spinning until they realize what the cause is. I have
called Chuck Westfall of Canon to discuss this with him but he is away on business,
and I do not think that this can wait.
The "gotcha" (I am not sure whether it is a bug or a design flaw)
involves the Custom feature, a very nice addition to the new Canon DSLRs. By
design one can set all of the camera settings, including Custom Functions,
and then store those settings into the Custom Mode (the "C" on the
mode dial), by selecting Register Camera Settings from the LCD menu. It all
works as advertised. But here comes the Gotcha.
Let's say that my custom setting is for AV mode at f/10 with +2/3EV. I put
the camera to C mode and the settings appear as stored. As I continue to shoot,
I decide to change the aperture to f8 and change the EV to +1/3. Because the
5D has almost instant power-on, and high battery usage, unlike previous Canon
cameras where I would set the power saver to 8 minutes or more, on the 5D I
set it to 2 or 4 minutes, so in fact the camera power will time out from time
to time when I am idle in relation to shooting. So, I am waiting for the next
shot. I see it coming, the camera springs to life almost instantly, but rather
than have my new f/8 and +1/3EV setting where I left off minutes ago, the camera
apparently says, "OK we are now powering up in the Custom mode, so
we will make sure that all the settings are as stored". GOTCHA!
I think a reasonable design is such that when manually powered down and repowering,
the camera come up in the stored Custom settings, as the camera does not know
whether you have stored the camera overnight, or just shut it off for a few
minutes. But for auto-power down, the camera must not change my settings. I
often don't even know that the camera was in power-down, because when I touch
the shutter button as I bring it up to my eye, it's springs instantly back to
life. So – PLEASE KEEP YOU HANDS OFF MY SETTINGS.
Obviously this is a one line code change (or at least very minor), so I hope
in fact that this is a bug and not a design flaw, because if it stays this way,
it is simply too dangerous to have the camera controls change during an auto-power
down.
In the meantime be very aware of this glitch, as it affects the basic use of
the camera in Custom Mode.
Regards,
Michael Tapes
Owner: www.RawWorkflow.com (a division
of PictureFlow LLC)
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