OK I picked up an elan 7 to replace my eos700 for Christmas and shot off three rolls over the holidays.

One question I had was with regards to the focus points. I opted for the version without the eyecontrol thinking I could just use the cursor buttons when required, but was a little disapointed that I can't use these keys in the non-creative zone modes i.e. the PIC and green square areas. The thing is that my wife who also uses the camera quite a bit to take snapshots just likes to point and shoot quickly when our kids are doing something, not too interested in all the technicall mumbo jumbo. With all that expanded focusing area it seems to me that it's quite probable that sooner or latter, in a crowded appartment the camera's going to pick the wrong subject to focus on. Even with me I found that there were times where a high contrast subject off to the side would take precidence over my kid's nose in some shots, and by the time I moved and focused again to get the lock I'd lose the moment.

With my older body this wasn't a problem since I only had one sensor, i'd just focus lock and recompose.

I'm wondering what other people have been thinking, are all those focus points out of control without the ECF feature. I'm wondering if I should send it back an get the 7e for the extra $80 or so.

BTW I'd didn't get the ECF thing because the sales guy said that eye glasses wearers were having a bit of trouble with it. Haven't had one to play with to try out my self.

-- Ron (rsbeselt@yahoo.com), January 03, 2001

Answers

I've used eye control on an Elan IIe for 4 years, and wouldn't want to be without it. It works great for me. It does work very well, or even at all for some people. Glasses seem to make a difference, but even that can't predict whether it will work or not. Some people who wear glasses have no problems, some who don't can't get it to work. Canon has refined eye with each new body, so there is no sure way to say it will, or won't work for you. The only way to find out is to try it.

-- Brad Hutcheson (bhutcheson@iname.com), January 03, 2001.

I work in a camera store and sell most of the Canon cameras and I own several of them myself. The Elan 7e ECF is the fastest and seems to be the best of all the ECF cameras. I have an EOS 3 which has ECF and the Elan is quicker and more accurate than the EOS 3. It works with both eyeglasses and without.BTW the more you use ECF and recalibrate it, the better it gets, and this is with all ECF cameras.

-- Marcus J. Wilson Sr. (marcus.wilson@dtra.mil), January 04, 2001.

I currently use the EOS 1V and 1N cameras, and IMO, multipoint autofocus patterns are really designed to be used with AI Servo for focus-tracking moving subjects. For static or relatively static subjects, I believe it is most wise to use a SINGLE AF sensor to pre-focus in One Shot AF mode, then recompose and take the picture. If one attempts to use a multpoint AF sensor array on a static subject, the camera cannot read the photographer's mind, and it will likely attempt to focus on the most dominant foreground element under these conditions; this means that the multipoint sensor array may often miss the point of critical focus. Therefore, I would suggest that you might want to teach your wife how to best use the camera in both AI Servo and One Shot AF modes, as well as how to quickly manually select one of the Elan 7's (7) AF sensors if she initially has difficulty with pre-focus/focus-lock, followed by quick recomposition. These basic skills are not hard to learn, but they do require ongoing practice to master.

-- kurt heintzelman (heintzelman.1@osu.edu), January 04, 2001.

Thanks for the input Kurt. That's exactly what I've been starting to think.

Both of us have gotten quite used to the focus and recompose technique over the past ten years of use with my older body. We were just a bit confused and overwhelmed as to how to best put these extra sensors into use. They seem to make sense in theory but - in practice things are a bit different.

BTW I finally found a camera shop in town where I could try one of the 7e's out and it worked great. Much better than the IIe I tried out last summer.

Love the results that I'm finally getting from my 380ex now that I've got an e-ttl compatible body. Super quiet too.

-- Ron (rsbeselt@yahoo.com), January 05, 2001.

I have only had the EOS 30/Elan 7e for a couple of weeks (unexpected christmas present from my wife :-)). I have found the ECF works with or without glasses but maintain one set of calibrations for with glasses and one for use without. If I use contacts then I will use another set for that if I have any trouble. It seems to select the point I want 8 times out of 10 first time and always when I concentrate more on the correct point if it doesn't select the right one first time.

One final point. Looking at the manual it looks as though you can only use manual focus selection in the creative zone anyway so the ECF would not solve your wife's problem so you would need to recompose anyway.

Hope this helps John Ross

-- John Ross (jpross@iee.org), January 12, 2001.