First drive without a mirror

Sunday, July 24th, 2022 at 10:24pm

I mentioned that my plan for the weekend was to get out with my new camera so today I headed down to the MSTEC National Steam Centre. It would have been better to go on a day when the engines were running, but I knew that there are plenty of interesting machinery to photograph, even when stationary.

I went light, just the R6 with 24-105mm and also the 16mm because even though I expected better low light performance than the 7D I knew that the f/2.8 would be nice when trying to get close ups indoors.

The first difference I noticed was due to the articulated screen as I am not sure if I want to have it facing in or out. I am so used to chimping after every shot so that means it should be out, but then it is always on unless I have my eye to the viewfinder. If I have the screen facing out I need to see what I can turn off with the touchscreen so I don’t accidentally change settings.

The next thing I found was that I am used to pressing the focus/zoom button on the 7D to zoom in when reviewing images. But on the R6 this is just a focus select button, you zoom with the horizontal wheel. A few times I realised that I had changed the type of focus points… will I learn to not use that button or should I customise so it is no longer focus select?

A big change is needed when I change lenses. As the 7D is a DSLR, when the camera is on not much is happening you can look through the viewfinder whenever you want and have the camera focus on something, it is only when you take a shot (or turn on live view) that the sensor is exposed. Although not quite the best practice I haven’t had issue with simply detaching one lens and attaching another one, the sensor is projected by the mirror and shutter. However with the R6 there is no mirror and the sensor is always on to capture an image for the viewfinder or display screen. I have it set so then when you turn the camera off it will close the shutter, but if I simply detach the lens then the sensor (that nice big full frame sensor) is fully exposed and as there is no mirror it is really close to the lens mount. I must re-train myself to turn the camera off and wait for the shutter to close before switching lenses.

None of what I have mentioned so far is a problem as I will need to adjust to having a new camera, however something that has now sucked up a few hours of my time is that so far haven’t been able to geotag the images I took today. I didn’t take my GPS with me as I expected that most of the photos I took would be indoors and a GPS track inside a metal building is never good. So I was fully expecting to have to manually geotag the images at home. I have previously described my geotagging process but all I will say for now is that I haven’t been able to find a tool that will work with CR3 files.

Overall it was a good day as I learned about this camera and how have a challenge in regard to geotagging…

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