Best Settings for Landscape Photography on the Canon R5 / R6

hey everyone good to see you in this video today i'm going to share with you recommended settings for shooting landscapes using both the canon eos r5 and r6 out of the box by default neither one of these cameras are really set up or optimized for shooting landscape photography so in this video today i'm going to walk you through all the settings that i use all the recommended things that i would recommend going into the camera and reconfiguring in order to make these cameras better and optimized and more ideal for shooting landscapes stick around [Music] hey how's it going my name is todd i make videos here on youtube about photography all right let's get into it with the very first setting that i recommend changing for both the eos r5 and the r6 and that is to set up the rgb histogram now chances are you're probably already familiar with the histogram if you keep pressing the info button on the back of the camera you will eventually see a white histogram on both the lcd and the viewfinder through the camera this histogram is really important and is incredibly useful especially when you are exposing your image to the right a common practice in landscape photography whereby you are increasing the exposure a little more than what it would normally be so that more of if you're able to do so without blowing out your highlights so that more of the image lives in the mid-tones and the highlights of your image as opposed to the shadows where there tends to be more noise but what you may not know is that that white histogram that you're looking at is an average between the red green and the blue channels and what can happen unfortunately is that if you are in say a landscape like this where there is a dominant color like there's a lot of green and yellow obviously around me because it's spring and there's a lot of trees a lot of foliage around me or if you were shooting a winter landscape with a lot of snow well the blue channel would be the dominant channel and what can happen sometimes when you're exposing to the right just using the regular histogram is you're completely unaware what's going on with the red green and blue channels and you run the risk of clipping one of those channels but you wouldn't know because you're looking at that white averaged histogram so the better thing to do is to go into the menu and to change the histogram from brightness to rgb that way you're seeing each individual channel so when you are exposing to the right you just keep pushing to the right until you see one of those channels get a little too close from comfort and then there is where you back off by the way there is another setting in there where you can make that histogram a little larger or smaller depending on your needs and depending on uh what it is what you prefer to see on screen next setting for shooting landscape images on the r5 and the r6 is electronic shutter now this is one of the really awesome things about the r5 and the r6 the fact that they have a digital electronic shutter as an option in addition to the physical mechanical shutter that you may be accustomed to if you've been using older uh like dslr cameras as opposed to newer mirrorless models like the r5 and the r6 so why is the electronic shutter good well for one it is nearly silent it is so much quieter than that than listening to that mechanical shutter opening and closing on the camera but the second and most important reason is the fact that it is less wear and tear on the camera and this is something i happen to know a thing or two about because i actually wore out the mechanical shutter on my 5d mark iv i had to mail it into canon and get them to fix it and send it back to me fortunately it didn't happen in the middle of a trip or anything like that but it does happen with mechanical shutters and if you've ever bought a used camera before you probably know uh how important a criteria uh shutter count is because the higher the shutter count the more used the camera is but if you just shoot it with an electronic shutter there's no wear and tear because everything is being done digitally and electronically now i know sometimes there can be issues when using the electronic shutter especially when shooting indoors with fast-moving subjects and there's some type of man-made lighting like led lights or fluorescent lights or something like that but if you're outdoors in an environment like this in natural light and you're doing still photography you're doing landscape images i can't think of a single reason not to use the electronic shutter so saves a little wear and tear on your camera and make that camera a little bit quieter by selecting electronic shutter all right the next setting that i would highly recommend disabling as soon as you get your r5 and r6 is to disable the beep now i know this probably sounds silly and rather subjective but trust me on this that beep that you hear whenever you're doing like a time lapse or a blended exposure or you're you know setting your focus point after a while when it's enabled by default and you do a lot of shooting with your camera you just forget about it you don't even hear the beep after a while because you're so accustomed to it but true story i was actually out shooting one time and there was a photographer nearby and i had my beep mode enabled and it was so quiet it was such a quiet serene landscape and this other photographer said to me they're like hey you know would you mind uh disabling that like it's it's kind of rude and at first i was like well you're rude for asking me to disable the people on my camera but no they're they're 100 right because i disabled it i gave it a try and it was so much nicer without the beep like you totally do not need it you don't need more noise like it's landscape photography is a serene kind of peaceful thing in general right the last thing that you want to hear and other people around you want to hear is that camera beeping so when you get that r5 and r6 just disable that beat all right the next setting is the interval timer the interval timer is a built-in intervalometer in both the canon r5 and r6 in years past with older cameras you would have to go out and buy a separate intervalometer a piece of hardware and plug it into the camera in order to uh to get this kind of functionality but now it's built right in interval timers are typically used by time lapse photographers who want to shoot a shot over you know over a certain amount of time and shoot a certain number of images so the camera can just shoot continuously and then pause between each image for like two seconds three seconds four seconds ten seconds but what i have found with the interval timer is that the interval timer actually has a use case that goes beyond just just simply time lapses because what it allows you to do is especially if you're shooting some type of scene where there is some type of continuous motion in the shot maybe it's clouds maybe it's light i have an ant on me maybe it's light maybe it's clouds passing overhead maybe it's waves coming in and out and instead of just you know shooting in continuous mode which is a fast burst of images where you just waste a bunch of disk space what you can do is you can set up the interval timer save for two seconds three seconds four seconds and after you get your shot composed just turn on that timer and let the camera run for a while and then you're able to you know capture 50 60 100 images however many you want and then later in post you can go back through and figure out which image has the exact right alignment of the clouds or the light isn't just the right place or maybe the crest of the wave is just right the line of it is just how you want it to be which can be rather uh hard to predict and kind of hard to do when you're just standing there pressing the shutter uh manually on the camera so if you never tried the interval timer for that use case it's something that i've tried a number of times and it works pretty well so the next setting is unfortunately not available on the eos r6 but it is on the r5 and that is memo recording now i don't know about you but there have been many times when i've been out shooting and i will have taken a photo and there's something about that photo that i want to remember later i need to make a mental note about it well sometimes that note gets punched into my phone or i might write it down on a piece of paper but most of the time it's forgotten and by the time i get home i have no idea what it was that i wanted to remember well the beautiful thing about memo recording on the r5 is that it's so quick it's so easy all you have to do is preview the image on the back of the lcd and then press that rate record button at the top left on the back of the camera body you then speak for a few seconds you don't need a mic you can just speak directly into the camera and that memo will then be saved to the memory card as a very small wav file using the exact same file name as the image that you were previewing so if you're having a hard time later after a shoot remembering things use that rate record button on the back to be recording memos it's really really helpful all right the next setting to talk about is focus bracketing now that's what canon calls it but i think most photographers would refer to it as focus stacking either way it's the exact same thing it's a technique you're probably familiar with where you create a single composite image using multiple images with each image having its own focal point it's something where you get deep focus in your shot where everything from the foreground to the background is tac sharp that is certainly something you can do manually on the camera but both the r5 and the r6 have built in focus bracketing that will automate it for you it will do the entire sequence for you and then later you can go in and combine all those images yourself so you're not having to manually compose and focus each shot now the quirky and kind of interesting thing about focus bracketing on the r5 and the r6 is that it is a function that is um that is supported by lenses in other words you have to have a compatible lens in order for focus bracketing to function as intended i will put a link below in the description to the lenses that are compatible with this mode no surprise it includes pretty much all the new canon rf lenses a few ef older ef lenses as well but it's a really interesting feature because the camera automates everything for you and it's intelligent enough to know which focal length you're using what aperture you're using and it knows how to slowly increment and change that focal point from the foreground to the background to get that optimum sharpness and that deep focus all the way through the frame without you having to do it manually all right so this looks like a good spot to take a break hang out maybe eat a little lunch and to talk about our next two settings two settings that i recommend changing on the r5 and the r6 in order to get more battery life out of the out of the cameras because obviously battery life is extremely important when you're out in the field shooting the first setting is to enable echo mode this will change the preview that you see on the back of the lcd so that you only see the image for about a couple of seconds and then it disappears and the nice thing about this is that then you're not wasting energy on the lcd screen now you can turn that preview off altogether if you want to but the echo mode is at least gives you two seconds a little bit of time just to verify your shot make sure that you're getting what it is that you want to get and save a little energy in the process the second setting is airplane mode this is very similar to airplane mode on your phone i don't know about you but sometimes in order to conserve battery life on my phone i turn on airplane just to make sure that it's not just aimlessly wandering trying to find a wi-fi source or bluetooth or whatever if you turn on airplane mode on the r5 and the r6 it will disable wi-fi it will disable bluetooth which you probably don't even need when you're out in the field anyway right you're probably going to end up wasting battery life on it so just turn on airplane mode and only disable it when you need to use it [Music] so the next setting that i would highly recommend familiarizing yourself with especially if you are new to canon cameras and you've never used uh one of these before is to familiarize yourself with the two and ten seconds self timers that are in drive mode this is accessed through the manual function button on the top of the camera and these are just countdown timers you press the shutter and it waits two seconds or 10 seconds and then the camera takes an image now the reason these are important for landscape photography is because oftentimes even when that camera is on a tripod a stable tripod the camera is still susceptible to shake and vibration when you press the shutter and those subtle just little micro vibrations could be enough to throw off the sharpness in your image especially if you're shooting using slow shutter speeds so it's really important when you're shooting on a tripod to always turn on that two second timer at least i think 10 is probably a little overkill but two seconds should be enough to dissipate any vibration in the camera body all right the next setting i want to talk about is the movie record button now the movie record button is available on both the eos r5 and r6 is a button right up here next to the shutter button you press the button while you are taking photographs and the camera immediately jumps over into video mode begins shooting uh video you press the record button again and it goes back to still photography mode now in theory that's great unfortunately on the r6 the functionality is somewhat crippled because the r6 does not allow you to configure what type of video is recorded when you press that button you can't stipulate shutter speed you can't enable c log it is just standard picture profile basic programmed video which sucks now the r5 is thankfully a different story on the r5 that movie record button uses custom video mode 3 which means if you want to control what type of video is recorded when that button is pushed all you have to do is assign those settings to custom video mode 3. so you can enable c log you can shoot an 8k you can use the appropriate shutter speed whatever it is that you want it's possible on the r5 so how is this useful for landscape photography well here's the scenario let's say that you have your tripod all set up you have your composition dialed in you are you know taking some photos and you think this would make a really good video like maybe some b-roll footage something like that that i could use for some other purpose well on the r5 all you have to do is press that movie record button and you're instantly shooting video of whatever it is that you're currently photographing here's an idea if you assign 8k as the custom video mode 3 which would then be available to use through that movie record button that effectively means you could take that ak video you could down scale it to 4k if you wanted to but you could also get a screen grab from it a single frame from an 8k video is a 45 megapixel image because 8k uses the full resolution of the sensor which is kind of crazy to wrap your head around but it's true so in a way it's almost like shooting a time-lapse sequence except you're shooting an 8k video and then later you're just pulling out whatever image you want but if you don't care about video at all and you never plan on shooting video on the r5 or r6 then put that movie record button to good use go into the menu on the camera go to customize buttons and then change the action of that movie record button to something more useful all right so that is it thanks so much for being here i hope you enjoyed the video if i provided at least one tip that helped you out something you hadn't thought of before please do me a favor give this video a thumbs up and while you're at it go ahead and subscribe to this channel if you haven't done so already lots of people watch videos on my channel and other people's channels as well who are not subscribers and you could uh really help me out and other people out if you enjoy the content on this channel to subscribe to it also if you are a landscape photographer using either the r5 or the r6 and if there's something i didn't think of a particular setting or configuration you think other people should know about you think i should know about please feel free to jump into the comment section below and let me know and let everyone else following this channel know would love to hear your thoughts follow me on instagram send me a direct message if you have any questions that is it for me i will see you next week you

Channel: Todd Dominey

Views: 10,733

Keywords: landscape photography, photography, todd dominey, eos r5, eos r6, canon r5, canon r6, r5 landscape tips, r6 landscape tips, r5 landscape photography, r6 landscape photography, r5 settings landscapes, r6 settings landscapes, canon r6 settings, canon eos r5, canon eos r6, canon mirrorless, landscape photography tutorial

Id: Vmy66HlGrLA

Length: 15min 44sec (944 seconds)

Published: Sun May 02 2021