Any recommended settings for a 40D?

[iainfm]

Hi,

I've had my 40D for nearly a year now, and I really love it. I was wondering though if anyone had any recommendations for making changes to any of the advanced settings that would improve the quality (for example) of the resulting image?

I had a brief flirtation with 'highlight tone priority', but turned it off in favour of ISO expansion (I like flash-free shots). Having said that, I wish I'd fully understood what it did when I was photographing my brother's bride recently...oh well, there's always next time!

Is there anything else worth playing with? I have to admit I don't know what 90% of them do!

Cheers,

Iain

 

[Uneducated_Rick]

It depends on what you are trying to do as to what settings to use?

Do you want to freeze motion?
Do you want a long shutter speed so that running qwater looks milky/smokey?

Do you want to capture a flower and blur everything behind it?
Do you want to take a landscape of rolling hills and have everything in focus?

What setting do you use on the camera? M, Av, Tv, or green box?

 

[Alastair]

Back-button focussing is available in the custom functions, it takes a while to get the hang of but now I've switched to it I find it comes naturally. It makes it easier to switch from continuous focus to focus-and-lock. Plus, I can't remember if mapping the focus points onto the thumb switch is enabled by default (usuing the the thumb joystick to select the focus point), I think that might be a custom function as well.

ISO expansion is ok in a pinch, but I find the noise beyond ISO 800 makes the end result largely unusable.

Other than that.. stick with M, Av and Tv and there's not much you need from the custom functions - unless you're doing something like night long exposures (mirror lock-up, long exposure noise reduction). But I do find I make a lot of use of the C1, C2 and C3 memories when I'm at an event or family get together. I'll usually map a couple of basic set-ups onto these at the start for the predictable moments..

 

[iainfm]

Thanks for the replies... I did once set the af point option, but then couldn't work out how to use the rear dial for aperture (iirc) in manual mode.

As for what I shoot... A wide range of things. I like plants and wildlife, but it could be anything.

If I know I won't have a lot of time to mess with settings, I usually go with the green box (or P if I want to avoid the flash). When I'm being a bit more artistic (!) I'll usually use Av to get the depth of field that I'm after, or I'm happy to use M to get the results I'm after.

I've not tried using the C1-3 memories yet...I'll have a play with those next I think!

Cheers,

Iain

 

[tijuana taxi]

You can change the picture style settings too, upping the sharpness, saturation etc.

If you changed them all by +1 they wouldn't all perform in the same manner, so those settings on neutral would behave differently to for instance changing them in standard

I use +3, +1, +1 and 0 in that order on Neutral for decent jpegs straight from the camera

 

[Alastair]

Thanks for the replies... I did once set the af point option, but then couldn't work out how to use the rear dial for aperture (iirc) in manual mode.

Iain, don't map it to the dial, there's a function to map it to the smaller joystick-like thumb button.

 

[iainfm]

You can change the picture style settings too, upping the sharpness, saturation etc.

If you changed them all by +1 they wouldn't all perform in the same manner, so those settings on neutral would behave differently to for instance changing them in standard

I use +3, +1, +1 and 0 in that order on Neutral for decent jpegs straight from the camera

Cheers - I'll have a play with them too. I was a little disappointed with some of the blue skies I took on holiday recently. They were a little...grainy (jpeg resolution was on max). My own fault for not turning raw saving on I suppose!

Iain, don't map it to the dial, there's a function to map it to the smaller joystick-like thumb button.

It seems to do that by default, I noticed tonight...

Thanks again!