Canon R1 settings for bears

[Fordsabroad]

I have a Canon R1 that is currently set up for bird photography using Jan Wegener's recommended settings. As a result, my shutter button is configured to shoot at a high frame rate on the half-press, with the full press set to 40 fps.

Later this month I'll be travelling to eastern Finland to photograph bears from a hide. I can't imagine I'll need anything like 40 fps for this type of photography.

For those of you who have photographed bears or other large mammals, what camera settings do you recommend for this sort of situation? If there are any good articles or YouTube videos that cover R1 wildlife settings for bears, I'd be very grateful for any recommendations.

 

[cuthbert]

I don’t photograph either, but I’d definitely be saving your bird settings to C1 preset and then perhaps copy your C1 preset to C2 for bears and just tweak it as you go. In many ways, I think birds and bears share many characteristics in terms of AF tuning, eg unpredictable movement, blocking elements in foreground etc. prob going to be a bit of trial and error, but if the bird settings work for on much smaller and erratic subjects, you’ve got an excellent base to start from.

 

[TimHughes]

Don't forget you can change the frame rate by changing drive mode - 40 fps is the high speed+ option, there is high speed and low speed as well as single frame options. And you can customise the frame rates in the custom functions mentioned. It's been a few years since I photographed bears; I remember the bear cubs moved pretty fast, so I would not go too slow, and it's easy enough to cull and delete the frames you don't need to keep.