Can someone verify how Custom shooting modes C1-C3 work? Canon EOS R5

[pedz]

Suppose I am in Program mode according to the Mode that I select via the top Mode button.  I set, just as an example, image quality to RAW (only).  I then clear the settings in C3 via the menu and then switch to Mode C3 via the Mode button.  I notice that the image quality is in Large JPEG … that’s to be expected.  I then switch back to Program mode via the mode button and I notice that Image Quality is back to Raw.  This is unexpected.

It appears that the settings in (pick a mode) Program Mode are 100% independent of the settings in C1-C3 mode.  This is “ok”… but it wasn’t what I was expecting.

I have “Auto update set.” disabled.

Am I interpreting this correctly?

What if I have all of my settings like I want in C3 and C3 happens to have the little P next to it which means that it goes to Program mode when I switch to mode C3.  But now I want to just switch to Manual mode but keep everything else the same.  What do I do?

It appears as if “Auto update set” doesn’t affect this particular question…. I hope I’m wrong.  This is close to unusable for me.

TL; DR - How do I switch from just the “Program” setting within C3 to “Manual”?

[johnrmoyer]

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@pedz wrote:

Suppose I am in Program mode according to the Mode that I select via the top Mode button.  I set, just as an example, image quality to RAW (only).  I then clear the settings in C3 via the menu and then switch to Mode C3 via the Mode button.  I notice that the image quality is in Large JPEG … that’s to be expected.  I then switch back to Program mode via the mode button and I notice that Image Quality is back to Raw.  This is unexpected.

It appears that the settings in (pick a mode) Program Mode are 100% independent of the settings in C1-C3 mode.  This is “ok”… but it wasn’t what I was expecting.

I have “Auto update set.” disabled.

Am I interpreting this correctly?

What if I have all of my settings like I want in C3 and C3 happens to have the little P next to it which means that it goes to Program mode when I switch to mode C3.  But now I want to just switch to Manual mode but keep everything else the same.  What do I do?

It appears as if “Auto update set” doesn’t affect this particular question…. I hope I’m wrong.  This is close to unusable for me.

TL; DR - How do I switch from just the “Program” setting within C3 to “Manual”?

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Maybe

Set C3 to P

Set C2 to M

I have set C1 to Fv, C2 to Av, and C3 to Av 1.6x crop, but that is my preference and not yours.

I prefer Fv to M for C1 because I still have a dial for each setting and pressing the trash button for a setting makes it auto.

RAW vs. CRAW seems to be preserved by C1,C2,C3, but DPRAW does not.

[pedz]

Oh… I had another question about C1-C3.  The net claims that saved settings to a file sometimes does not work across firmware updates.  I have not experienced this myself but there are a lot of articles on the net talking about it.

What I was doing today was making a sets of settings and saving them to files and I was going to archive them to my computer.  The “C1” I can’t remember so when I do “astrophotography” I can load my “Astro” settings.

But I’m worried / wondering if I’m going to be deeply frustrated at some future point when a firmware upgrade makes all of these files worthless.

Did this actually happen?  Was it just once (like someone goofed and it was too late to fix it or is it just a known danger with saving settings to files?

[p4pictures · Accepted solution]

The custom shooting modes C1-C3 are modes that you can allocate any of the other creative modes to. You can for example use them as three extra versions of program (P) mode, or you could choose the make C1 another version of manual (M), C2 another version of shutter priority (Tv) and C3 another version of aperture priority (Av). In addition each of the custom modes can have different AF, shooting, custom buttons etc.

Say for example I want to make C1 a version of manual mode. First select M on the mode switch / dial. Then go to the set up menu and register the mode to C1. Now when you select C1 it will not be C1 p, but C1 m.

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@pedz wrote:

TL; DR - How do I switch from just the “Program” setting within C3 to “Manual”?

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To answer this question…

1. set the camera to manual mode M
2. navigate to custom shooting mode (C1-C3) on the set up menu
3. select register settings and choose C3
4. select C3 mode and it will now be a copy of manual mode

The custom mode you registered also copied most the camera settings. Imagine you wanted to use C1 for portraits and the regular manual mode for wildlife photography. AF settings, drive mode and many more may need to be different. This is where the auto update setting comes in. With auto updates enabled, select the C1 mode, and now any changes you make to the camera settings will update what is stored as part of C1. In fact the only element you can't change is the mode itself eg from M to Tv. Once you have made all the changes you want you can disable the auto updates so now any changes made to C1 are only temporary, and will last until you select another mode or switch the camera off.

On some cameras the custom modes are also separate for video and stills, the EOS R5 is one such camera with three custom modes for stills and three more for movies. The EOS R6 only has custom modes for stills and none for movies, but EOS R6 Mark II has three for stills and three more for movies.

[pedz]

In fact the only element you can't change is the mode itself eg from M to Tv

That answers my question.  No, I can not change just the mode itself.  That, to me, is just whacko.  Lets say I want C3 for wildlife and usually prefer manual mode for wildlife but I get into a situation where I want Av mode but still keep all of my other settings the same.  The way my brain works, this happens to me all the time.  I don’t think in term of being in “C3” mode.  I think term of getting to a group of settings and that group of settings is called C3.  After switching to C3, I want the concept of C3 completely forgotten about.

The other thing that is weird that I just discovered.  If I save settings to a File and then restore the settings from that file, the “C3” concept is baked into the file.  After the file loads, I am back in “C3” mode.

To me, I feel trapped in C3 mode.

I think… what I am going to do is as I said before, save groups of settings to files but never ever go near the C1-C3 concepts.

[pedz]

I see now that the title of the chapter in the manual is “Custom Shooting Mode (C1-C3)”.  I had always thought of it as “Custom Shooting Settings”.  BUT… in the table of contents, under the section for “Shooting Mode”, C1- C3 are not listed.  Anyhow… clearly I need to rethink if / how / when I am going to use them.

[Waddizzle]

Custom Shooting modes store preset camera configurations. 

[pedz]

Off topic slightly but what would be a very nice solution is to get the phone app to know about the settings and let it save named groups of settings.