Some camera related questions

[Mircula]

Hi,

I recently went trough the menu of my Canon 20d again and noticed a couple of things I wanted to ask you about.

1.
There is a option for red eye on/off.....Do you use that? Or is it better do do that in pp?

2.
Should i use the long exposure noise reduction? As well, better in pp or should i turn this option on?

3.
if the AF point selection is set to automatic a few focus points flash when focusing. How does the camera know what to focus on and why do several focus points flash? I always set my focus point where i want to have it....how about you?


Thanks a lot :)

Cheers,

Mirc

[MarkChap]

Answers
1- I don't have Red Eye Reduction turned on, but it is always better to avoid rather than try and fix it later

2- I don't use long exposure noise reduction, but then I don't shoot a lot of long exposures either. Long exposure noise reduction takes the same time as the exposure to process, so if you have a 3 minute exposure LENR will take another 3 minutes before you can once again use your camera.

3- I always select the focus point that I want, other wise the camera will chose to focus on what ever is closest to the camera, ie- nose instead of eyes, that wavey bit of grass instead of the bird.

Hope this helps, not saying it right or wrong, it is how I set up MY camera

[Mircula]

Hui, thank you for the informative answer.

1: I am just wondering what other Canon users do...Not sure how well it works in camera anyway....

2: anybody else here experience with it? what is better?

3: explained :) !!!

[Mircula]

hey,

any other insights on this topic?


Cheers,

mirc

[Bax]

I'm the same as Mark.

1. I leave red eye turned off. I've never really used it, but as far as I'm aware it just flashes another light before the final/ main flash.

2. I leave noise reduction off, I think I'll be turning it on again as it all helps. But when I was taking long exposures (40 minutes in some instances) the camera would then sit and think about it for as long as 10 minutes. This was with the old 350D, and I haven't tried it since with the 40D.

But all my long exposures are blends of multiple, shorter shots now. So it shouldn't be a problem.

[MarkChap]

Hui, thank you for the informative answer.

1: I am just wondering what other Canon users do...Not sure how well it works in camera anyway....

2: anybody else here experience with it? what is better?

3: explained :) !!!

Red Eye reduction fires a smaller lower power "pre flash" to close down the pupil of the eye, then fires the exposure flash, with a smaller pupil the chances of red eye are greatly reduced.

The best option is to not have the flash on the same axis as the lens, then there is no red eye

[swifty]

For no.2 if it's dark frame subtraction noise reduction then it's generally a good thing because it's not some algorithm trying to blur out noise and doing the same to some detail inadvertantly. Dark frame subtraction takes a second exposure with the shutter closed to minus the hot pixels build up etc. from ur actual exposure.
But it chews through your battery though as it will double every long exposure shot. I don't know how bad the 20D suffers from this type of noise. Experiment by exposing a dark frame for different lengths of time then u'll know what your acceptable threshold is, rather than let ur camera decide when it kicks in.

[Mircula]

hey guys, thank you for the explanations!!!