COVID Strikes Again. And a Day Late: Announcing the BAA Canon R5/R6 Autofocus e-Guide

COVID Strikes Again

From the California Department of Health website:

No hotel or lodging entity in California shall accept or honor out of state reservations for non-essential travel.

I have, therefore, canceled the San Diego IPT and my entire trip to California. It will be the first time in 49 years that I have not visited San Diego in winter. The two folks who had signed up are of course receiving complete refunds. Carl Page, who was the first to sign up, is on his way from CA to Tampa as I type. He will be joining me on Saturday morning at DeSoto. I have room for one more. If you are interested, please call me on my cell at 863-221-2372 or text me if I do not pick up.

What’s Up?

I had a great morning at Fort DeSoto with Joe Usewicz. We met about a zillion years ago in Cape May, New Jersey when I was a keynote speaker at a Fall Round-Up. We enjoyed a feeding spree with Snowy and Great Egrets, adult and immature Little Blue Herons, two dark morph Reddish Egrets, a single Great Blue Heron, and a squadron of Red-breasted Mergansers. At another spot we had five gull species at once: the expected laughing and ring-billeds, some young herrings, a beautiful young lesser-black backed (formerly rare, now uncommon), and a first winter Great Black-backed Gull (fairly rare in central Florida). Bird-wise, we finished up with a very tame juvenile Reddish Egret.

Then we spent an hour in the parking lots talking about the old days in Cape May: CMBO, David Sibley (and wife Joan Walsh), Richard Crossley, Julian Hough, Pete Dunne, Tony Leukering, Jerry Liquori, Frank Nicoletti, Jack Conner (author of Season at the Point), Kevin and Dale Carlson, William S. Clark, Brian K. Wheeler, Paul Lehman, Shawneen Finnegan’s Cape May/Route 47 Yellow-nosed Albatross, and Paul Kerlinger to name a few.

BAA Canon R5/R6 Autofocus e-Guide

Twenty-one pages. 3,452 words. 28-DPP4 screen captures showing the R5’s vaunted AF system in action. Note: the AF system of the R5 is identical to the AF system of the R6.

You will learn:

1- The two most useful AF Methods for general bird photography and for birds in flight.

2- How to set up your R5/R6 AF Menus.

3- What boxes to check under Limit AF Methods.

4- How to change the the AF Method quickly, easily, and efficiently. Note: the default way of doing this is clunky, cumbersome, and inefficient at best.

5- The only setting that should be used for Initial Servo AF pt for Face Detection + Tracking.

I you are currently using multiple back buttons either for general bird photography or for birds in flight, what you learn in this guide will change your life. For the better.

Here are the first three paragraphs of this e-Guide:

From the moment I learned about the new Canon mirrorless bodies, I read about using two or three back-buttons to focus using different AF methods. The word on the street said that the way to go for birds in flight was to use one button to acquire focus with Zone AF or with Large Zone: Horizontal AF and then switch to another button to activate Face Detection + Tracking AF and then use the shutter button to make an image. My immediate thought was, “This is insanity! There has got to be a better way.” In short, there is a far superior way to set up AF on your R5 or R6.

The default method of switching AF Methods with the R5/R6 bodies is cumbersome at best. It involves first pressing the grid button (my name) on the upper right back of the camera and then pressing the hard-to-access M-Fn button to toggle through the AF Methods. This method is so bad that it will not be mentioned again in this guide.

The guide is free to all who have ordered an R5 or an R6 using my B&H affiliate link or from Steve Elkins/Bedfords using the BIRDSASART coupon code at checkout. Please send your receipt to me via e-mail. It will take me a few days to a week to verify the B&H purchases. Bedfords folks should expect their free e-Guides fairly quickly.

To purchase your copy of the e-Guide, please send a PayPal for $25.00 to birdsasart@verizon.net and be sure to include the words R5/R6 AF Guide in your PayPal e-mail. If you would like to receive your copy before Monday, please shoot me a copy of your PayPal transaction via e-mail.

Everyone who gets the guide will receive a free update no later than the first week in January.

Typos

In all blog posts and Bulletins, feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos or errors. Just be right :).