I typically use a tripod and aperture priority for most of my photography but when I am on holiday abroad or just out for a walk around town, I don’t want to carry the extra weight.
I have found that Fv mode on the EOS R is the ideal camera setting for this ‘walk about’ photography.
I used to have the aperture and ISO set and allow the camera to set the shutter speed, but sometimes the shutter speed would be too slow for hand-holding and I had to be careful to check and increase the ISO in such instances.
With Fv mode, I still set the aperture and leave the camera to set shutter speed and ISO and have exposure compensation set for manual adjustment. I use the control wheel (next to the shutter button) to make adjustments in exposure as required.
The EOS R chooses a shutter speed based on the reciprocal of the focal length of the lens and I set an ISO range of 100 – 6400 that takes care of most situations. I find that the camera manages noise very well at 6400 ISO.
I also have the LCD turned in as I can see the image exposure in the viewfinder. This avoids inadvertently moving the focus point with my nose.
I set the Multifunction bar as follows: Left touch – electronic level; Slide – off; Right touch – histogram. This allows me to toggle these features on and off to check level and exposure while shooting.
I ‘lock’ these settings and save them to C3 as my ‘walk about’ custom program. Locking prevents resetting all to auto by accidentally touching the 4-way switch.
I recently visited the annual Giant Chinese Lanterns exhibition at Edinburgh Zoo and used this technique to photograph the lanterns. The exhibition is after dark and these images were all shot hand-held in my Fv mode. A selection of these images are on my
Flickr Gallery.