With all due respect, rmpsrpms, perhaps you're shooting the wrong brand.
If you go through every single image in my CCF Gallery (and I have the largest Gallery of any member) you won't see 10 images that were shot with manual focus. Not even a slab causes the Digital Rebel/100mm Macro combination to miss an autofocus. The only times I've ever played with manual focus were essentially to confirm the autofocus capability of the lens. With AF Mode set to One Shot and focus point forced to Center, it just plain gets it right every time.
This may, of course, be assisted by my habit of throwing huge piles of light at the coin.
Lukkyseven, rmpsrpms' use of the term "macro mode" is not a physical camera setting but a description of the field on which you're playing, so to speak. You're in "macro mode" because you're using your equipment in that fashion.
The "Quiet Mode" referred to here is actually intended to make the camera audibly quieter to use, for situations when you really don't want to have that snapping sound. Many cameras have it as a menu choice. The Digital Rebel series use this mode by default, always - it doesn't turn "on" or "off."
Here's how it works (your eyes may glaze over here):
Visualize a physical aperture inside a camera. A bunch of curved blades, forming a circular opening of a diameter determined by your Aperture setting. In the old days, this was the shutter, as well - when you actuate it, the blades snap open to that aperture diameter for a moment (your Exposure setting) and then close.
These days, they do it with curtains in front of and behind the physical aperture blades. The First Shutter Curtain (in front) and the Second Shutter Curtain (behind). These move horizontally in front of the sensor, starting on the same side and in the same direction. When you start the exposure, the first curtain snaps open, then the second curtain closes to finish the exposure. For really fast exposures, both curtains move at the same time, the second trailing the first slightly. What that creates is a vertical slit of light moving across the sensor; the sensor is never completely exposed at any moment during the shot.
Now, a neat thing you can do with a digital sensor that you never could with a film sensor: You can tell the digital sensor when to start capturing information. Quiet Mode eliminates the first shutter curtain by telling the sensor when/how to start capturing data, and then the second shutter curtain, synchronized with the camera's computer, finishes the exposure. You can electronically mimic the "rolling vertical slit" operation of a fast shutter speed this way, eliminate the first shutter curtain's noise, and as a neat benefit it also eliminates the minute mechanical vibrations that the first shutter curtain passes on to the mirror. The vibrations caused by the second shutter curtain are less important.
That, in combination with Mirror Lockup - which you, lukkyseven, are getting automatically with the 2-sec timer, but you can also force it manually - leads to as vibration-free a photographic experience as can be had with a dSLR.
And that's one of the reasons I shoot Canon.
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Posted 07/26/2011 12:29 pm
deh uh... I can take da pixure
