Hey, this is Scott of Photography Banzai.
Today are going to look at an action setup with a Canon EOS M50...
Basically the entire camera all those settings that would potentially
work nicely for taking photos of moving subjects. Can see it's in Tv mode. With Tv
you're going to be adjusting the shutter speed. That's the key component to action
photos in this setup. Of course, you can press this little button here and switch
to exposure adjustments with that. Basically you'll be adjusting shutter
speed in this setup. Of course, depends on the situation. Something else might work
better for you, but with this setup we are going Tv. Let's go into the menu, first
page, JPEGs. I have it set to the largest JPEG. It'll be a little faster, better for
the camera instead of doing RAW photos. But of course, you can do both and I have
a button set up for that, that we'll get to. Image review you want that disabled. You
don't want that showing up in the viewfinder when you're trying to do
action photos. Have these lens aberration corrections disabled as well. Probably a
little faster on the camera to not mess with those. For the drive mode I'm going
to use low-speed continuous for this setup, but of course you can use the
high-speed if you want depending on the situation. Sometimes you might need more
frames. But even the low speed is pretty quick. Tab 1 page 2, we're gonna look at
the ISO settings. With Tv we have auto ISO. in this case 6400 should be more than
enough in a lot of situations, and with the M50 anything higher than that is
probably going to be pretty rough on the photos. Auto lighting optimizer, I have
this disabled. It'd probably be quicker. If it's something you think might work
for you and adjust those JPEGs a little better feel free to try it out. But I
have it disabled. In the metering setup you might need to adjust the metering
depending on the situation you've got the spot metering or partial, but I just
have it set to the standard. With white balance, auto white balance is decent
on the M50. But of course you can adjust that if you need to. Especially if
you're shooting JPEGs you do want to get a good white balance for the photos.
Picture style, I use faithful a lot, it's decent. But there of course are a lot of
other ones to use potentially. Especially with JPEGs this is something you do need
to consider. Through this we've got long exposure
noise reduction. I turn all these off. Touch shutter disabled. You don't want
anything on-screen messing with you. Touch and drag AF settings are important
in this case. We'll be using the viewfinder and we
absolutely want this set up. It uses the screen where you can touch it and move
the focus area for the viewfinder and it works very nicely. That means we want to
enabled. Positioning method absolute. In this case it's very quick to use it
instead of relative. Basically, absolute allows you to move your finger a lot
less to cover the entire screen with the focus area. Of course, you can use
relative if it works better for you. Try them both out and see which one works
for your situation. In my case I use my left eye with the viewfinder and I
prefer top left. So in this general area. With all of the AF settings we've got
servo mode. That's important! You want it to continuously focus on your subject on
your focus area and not stop. In this case we will have a button set up to
just between these quickly, but generally you can try tracking. But I prefer the
zone AF. It's a large box of focus areas that it continuously tries to
focus on. It just is a little bit quicker. A little bit more consistent and
you don't have to mess with it as much. Of course you can also try the single point
AF, but in general I like the zone focusing with this action setup. With
this continuous AF it basically means the camera will constantly try to focus.
We don't want that. We just want it to try to focus when we're getting ready to
take a photo. So half pressing the shutter, or pressing another button if
it's set up like that. Have this AF assist light disabled. In many
situations with action you're not going to be close enough to use that
effectively. So it's just something... a hinderance... I have it turning off. With the
peaking settings, unless you're doing manual focus, disable it.
IS settings are related to video in this case, so we have that disabled. Of course, if
your lens has internal stabilization, you might as well turn it on. With all the
movie settings are not going to be messing with this stuff for action
photos. I have all of the wireless settings disabled in this case. We don't
want to mess with that. Wastes power. Just not needed in this situation. You want
the ECO mode off. You want the power saving to whatever works best for you. In
this case... might want to disable this so that the viewfinder always stays on.
In an action situation we'll be using the viewfinder exclusively, but it will
have a button setup to switch between the viewfinder and the screen.
In this case we're going to go manual, and just for this video
it is set to screen. But you can easily set it to viewfinder and that's what you'll
want to do. Let's go into the viewfinder format. Now, this is a preference thing
but I prefer the smaller view. It's a little easier with glasses. Now you can
use that larger one if you'd like, but I have that set up to number two.
In this case, you definitely want the higher frames per second in the viewfinder. So I
have that set up to smooth. Reverse display, that's not something you need to
care about in this situation. You can disable that. Shooting info display, let's
go in here. Screen info settings... With not much
on it. Let's go inside there. You can see I only have this one checkbox set up.
Otherwise this adds a lot of extra stuff to the screen that we don't need to
really care about in these situations. You can, of course, check these out and
see if they would help you with your setup. But in my case I want it as basic
as possible. So you just got that one single screen less things to change
accidentally. Especially in actions situations you want it quick, you want it
consistent. Let's go into the viewfinder. Same set up. We have as minimal as possible.
We don't need this extra information.
Here this is a preference thing. I have it set
up to the 3x3 diagonal with the lines, but of course you can turn these gridlines
off. So you can see those lines do show up on the screen and it makes it's
easier to adjust to where your position is and get it straight on diagonals. So
just something to consider if you do want that you're a little bit of help.
You can see on the screen it is very minimal. If you try to press the info
button nothing changes, but that's what we want. Go back into the menu.
Check all these other ones out. Custom functions, so we're going to be adjusting
the controls based on this action setup. The first one is standard. Not going to
mess with this. Now, you can adjust it so it only does metering or auto exposure
lock. Depending on how you want it set up you can actually set this button to
focus. But in this case with the M50 it's hard to press this one button and that
at the same time with one hand. So I just leave it as is.
Here for this button I actually have this adjusted for autofocus off. In some
situations if you're have pressing the shutter, you've got a subject locked and
you want the autofocus to just stop... You can hold this button down here as I
have it set up, and I'll do that. The M-Fn button on the top here I have
set to switch between the viewfinder and the screen. That way it's not going to
use this sensor because I set it to manual. With that button, that allows us
to use the screen when we need to. But basically we're focused on the
viewfinder. So that button will help us switch when we have to. So we go in here...
You can pick this one, switch between VF and screen. As you can see the sensor is
not working. Press the button it switches to the viewfinder. Press it again goes
back to the back screen. So this one I set up the video recording button to RAW
or JPEG. So in this case let's just look in here. You can see one touch... It cycles
between those. So the button is up here on top. You can see that it is cycling
between RAW or RAW plus JPEG, or just JPEG. That allows us to use RAW when we
really want to, but in most situations JPEG would be good with these action
photos. So here we leave this as is with the exposure compensation. That's the top
button right here. Here we also leave af/mf as is. Sometimes you might want to
use manual focus. Here with the the flash icon I use AF method. This allows us to
cycle between AF methods. I have that set up in a lot of my videos. You can see it
easily allows you to pick one of these three. Press the 'Q' and switches there.
It's very convenient, it's quick, and it's a perfect button for this specific thing.
As I said before I use zone AF, but you can use one of the three as you prefer.
The trash button, I do have this adjustment as well. It's not super
necessary, but I have it setup to ISO speed. Just in case I want to adjust
that setup and go from auto to something else. So it's pretty quick and easy to have a
button on there. In action situations having the buttons configured like that
really helps out. The last thing I have adjusted here is the
"my menu". I set up a few different options here that you might want to consider
adding to one of these my menus. That way if you leave it on there you press the
menu button it'll stay and jump right to this screen. Gives you some things quick
access and it can be convenient. So basically Drive Mode, ISO settings,
highlight tone priority if we're using JPEGs, that could be useful. Metering mode, white balance...
Again, with JPEGs adjusting white balance can be useful. And picture
style, that again with JPEGs something useful. So these can be adjusted as you
would like, as you prefer. You can have multiple screens, but in this case these
settings with Tv mode and JPEGs I could see potentially using these and wanting
quick access. Hope you found this setup useful.
Scott of Photography Banzai. Thanks!