canon lcd panel doesn't shut off in stock

"Just like Canon"s Professional series line of camera"s the EOS 90D does not have an eyepiece sensor to turn off the LCD screen and requires the info button to be pressed in order to turn off the LCD screen while shooting photos through the viewfinder."

My recollection is that the shutoff "feature" wasn"t there because it was thought to be a convenience for the user. Like the rubber eyepiece cover that attaches to the neck strap, it was meant to keep light from the screen from leaking in through the eyepiece and biasing the metering. Perhaps the newer, better cameras are considered to be sufficiently insulated from spurious light that the shutoff is unnecessary. Note that if the screen serves as a touchscreen, you might specifically not want the shutoff.

when I was shooting at high speed, an error occurred and I can"t click anything. so I turn off the camera, but the display mode is still on, I can see "M, wi-fi on the panel. Have tried to take out the battery, LCD is off. Once I put the battery in, even camera is off, the LCD will be on.

The top panel always shows the exposure mode (M, Av, Fv, TV etc.) and whether Bluetooth and/or WiFi is on, even when the camera is switched off.  It"s an LCD, its power consumption is negligible, it just lets you know the battery"s installed.

Went out this AM with my new R5 + grip (about 2 weeks past return period) and after turning on the back LCD screen got a block of vertical lines in it then slowly faded to darkness. The EVF seemed to still be working but then promptly stopped as well. The top LCD remained on the whole time and had a full battery indicator. If I turned it off it would sometimes turn off but after doing this process several times it occasionally would NOT turn off and the only way to power down was removing the battery tray from the grip. I tried putting a single battery in the camera without grip but no change. The battery indicator on top LCD continued to indicate full charge throughout. The back LCD was never responsive to touch input so I could not review settings or anything else.

I don"t recall running the batteries (which are stock Canon LP-E6NH) down or even near down on my last shoot which was just last weekend. The camera has been in my bag since that time in a climate controlled space. No exposure to moisture or impact or anything else. I"m hoping that the batteries have run down and I just didn"t notice so I"m charging it now. I have generally kept spare batteries on hand with previous camera setups just haven"t gotten around to buying a few extras because even after a heavy 4 hours of shooting 3k+ photos, I never go below half charge in a gripped 2-battery setup. But, if that"s the issue I will go back to my usual and previous practice, which is generally a good move. The cost of the batteries just lost me a nice morning out shooting. Fortunately the green light is on the grip and lightning charge bolt is on the top LCD so the camera at least seems to know it"s being charged. I just can"t figure out the top LCD saying full charge the whole time. Doesn"t make sense.

My R5 surely does diminish battery life between uses to a degree my previously SONY A9I/II or Canon 5D3 never did, which is disappointing. I know there are lots of settings to adjust to improve battery life when the camera is on, but I"m not aware of much I can do (except remove the batteries... which would hopefully work!!!) to stop any battery loss while the camera is off... and it was OFF when I went to use it this AM. I had not inadvertently left it on. I don"t recall if it the R5 has an auto-Off feature, but certainly good to have. I"m also curious about the always on nature of the top LCD. Probably a slow power draw, but certainly a power draw. I don"t find myself using it much for the work I"m doing now so might look to see if it can be turned off all the time. I certainly don"t need an LCD displaying information for me while my camera is off as there is no utility in that for me at all.

The camera may seem to be off because the display isn"t working. Try pressing the shutter button and listening for the camera to make a sound to make sure the display is broken and not something else. If the issue persists, you can follow this guide to replace it.

The auto power off feature is activated in order to increase the battery life of the camera. If you do not want auto power off activated, set it to “disable” in the settings menu.

It is possible to turn off touch control in order to save battery life. To enable it again, go to settings and make sure "Enable" is set with "Touch control".

If your camera won"t turn on, the battery charger may not be working properly. The battery charger has a light that will turn on when the battery has been placed inside and the unit plugged in. This light will change from red to green when the battery is fully charged. Be sure that the charger cable is inserted correctly in the power source. If the light remains off when the charger is plugged in, the charger may need to be replaced. See the additional links on the device page for more information on purchasing a new charger.

If your lens isn"t working properly, your battery and memory card covers may not be closed. Make sure the battery cover or memory card slot cover is not open while the power is on. Close the battery cover or memory card slot cover and turn power off.

If your lens will not extend or retract, there may be something caught in the lens. Dirt or dust particles often get stuck in the lens. If dust is trapped, the lens cover may not close or it may not extend and retract smoothly. To clean the lens, try using compressed air, which can be found at an office supply store. Move the fine tip around the lens area while facing the camera downwards so that the dirt falls out.

If the flash doesn"t work, it may be set to off. Make sure the flash setting is on. To change the flash settings, press the lightning bolt button to the right of the screen.

Like most SLRs these days, the Canon T3 features a Live View mode for its rear-panel LCD monitor. The Live View mode lets you use the LCD monitor as a large viewfinder, and offers an exposure simulation function which attempts to display the expected outcome of your chosen exposure settings. A dedicated Movie / Live View button is used to activate or disable Live View mode on the Rebel T3, and the function is available in all still image shooting modes. (In Movie mode, the live view feed cannot be disabled, and the same button instead acts to start or stop movie recording.)

The Canon T3"s Live View mode feature set is comprehensive, and the display offers a lot of information such as current settings, exposure, and composition aids (see illustration below, courtesy of Canon USA). The Canon T3 groups settings related to Live View shooting in Record Menu 4, a much more logical location that that used by older Rebel-series models, which hide these options in a separate Live View / Movie menu accessed through Setup Menu 2. There"s still a little possibility of confusion though, since several options are duplicates of those in the Movie menus, and so if they"re changed in one menu, the equivalent variable will have changed on return to the other menu. A nice feature of Canon"s Live View mode is that it doesn"t immediately stop the live view feed when you enter the camera"s menu system, or switch between operating modes. Some rival cameras will immediately terminate the live view stream and drop the camera"s mirror in either instance, causing unnecessary wear and tear on the mirror and shutter mechanisms if you were intending to immediately continue live view shooting.

The Live View mode also includes a greatly abbreviated equivalent of the Quick Control menu screen that"s available when shooting using the viewfinder, accessed using the rear-panel Quick Control button. Instead of filling the screen, it is shown as a single column of icons at the left of the LCD display, and allows adjustment of AF mode, Drive mode, White Balance, Picture Style, Auto Lighting Optimizer, Image Quality / Size, and ISO Sensitivity, as well as selection of the active AF point if using Quick mode autofocus.

The T3"s Live View mode offers three autofocus modes, selected through the Live View function settings screen or Quick Control menu: "Quick mode," which employs the camera"s dedicated phase-detection sensor, as it would when using the optical viewfinder, plus two contrast-detection autofocus types--"Live mode" and "Face Detection Live mode"--which both operate on data streamed from the image sensor itself. Face Detection Live mode can detect multiple faces in the frame, but only selects (and indicates) one face on which the camera will set focus and exposure. The selected face can be changed by pressing the left and right arrow keys to jump through the detected faces in either direction. The contrast detection modes are slower than phase-detection focusing, but don"t require the mirror briefly drop to redirect light to the phase-detection AF sensor, which interrupts the live view display in Quick mode. The contrast detection modes can also be more accurate, and allow the AF point to be positioned anywhere within the image frame (except for the extreme edges), rather than being limited to the T3"s nine fixed AF points. On the flip side, Quick mode AF can be noticeably faster, even when taking account of the time to cycle the mirror, especially when shooting in low-light or with low-contrast subjects. Quick mode is also better suited to moving subjects, which can make it challenging to achieve a focus lock using contrast detection AF.

The point(s) at which a focus lock was achieved in Quick mode AF are indicated on the live view feed with a green focus point indication immediately after the live view feed resumes, since the feed must be briefly interrupted during focusing. Alternatively, you can bring your eye to the viewfinder during the AF operation. Even though you"re framing images using the LCD display, the viewfinder becomes visible with the mirror dropped for focusing, and the active AF point(s) are still indicated for the brief time that the optical view is available, perhaps letting you judge whether to trip the shutter just slightly earlier. Manual focus is also supported in live view mode, and includes either 5x or 10x image magnification to assist.

In Live View mode, evaluative metering is always used to determine correct exposure, though exposure compensation is available. The Exposure Simulation function will attempt to recreate the exposure level that would be obtained with your current settings on the LCD display. This may raise noise levels of the live view feed beyond what could be expected in the final image, since it must operate with a fast enough shutter speed to achieve its required refresh rate. The aperture also remains open by default, and so the exposure simulation doesn"t indicate the areas in focus unless you configure the Set button to provide depth-of-field preview, and then hold it down during live view. Exposure Simulation will attempt to continue even with depth of field preview active, though this may raise the live view noise levels even further. If you pass outside the range where the live view feed can simulate your exposure, the "Exp. Sim" icon near the bottom right of the LCD will blink, as a warning. Unlike in more sophisticated Canon SLRs, you can"t disable exposure simulation, and so there"s no way to obtain a clear live view feed with which to judge focus and framing, without being shown the effect of your exposure variable choices.

You can enable one of two different overlays, which divides the screen with either a 2x2 grid, or a 5x3 grid, useful for precise image framing. You can also specify how long the camera"s metering system should remain active without user interaction, within a six-step range from four seconds to thirty minutes. It"s overruled by the Auto Power Off function, so whichever timer is shorter will apply. Also, Live View shooting can be disabled altogether if you don"t use it, preventing the mode being accidentally triggered by bumping the Movie / Live View button.

The Canon T3 comes equipped with a temperature sensor, and if the internal temperature exceeds an undisclosed threshold, Live View will be disabled to protect internal circuitry from overheating. A high temperature icon is displayed on the LCD monitor to warn the user that image degradation may be occurring, and that the camera may disable Live View until normal operating temperature is restored.

The T3"s Live View mode offers an abbreviated equivalent of the Quick Control menu, accessed using the same Quick Control button as when shooting with the optical viewfinder. The vertical arrow keys select which option to adjust, while the Main dial or the horizontal keys makes the adjustment. The set key will call up a menu showing all available selections for one specific option.

Here, the effect of changing exposure by adjusting the shutter speed is simulated. (Note that this particular animation comes from our Rebel T2i review, but the function operates similarly on both cameras.)

A white box at the center of the live view feed. indicates the area that can be enlarged to aid in manual focusing or confirmation of precise autofocus, and can be moved around the image frame (except to extreme edges). Pressing the zoom button magnifies what"s in the magnifying frame by 5x. Pressing the zoom button again zooms in to 10x, great for checking critical focus, or for manually focusing. Once zoomed in, you can move the magnified area around in the box, using the legend at bottom right as a guide. If "Face Detection Live AF" mode is enabled, magnifying the image is not possible, though you can always check critical focus by magnifying the captured image, or temporarily switching to Manual focus mode. Note that this screenshot was captured on the T3"s HDMI port, and hence the layout has been changed to move the panning guide outside of the image area, since the HD output has a wider aspect ratio than the LCD panel.

Camera failures can happen anytime. Even the high-end Nikon, Sony or Canon cameras are not devoid of malfunctions. Sometimes it is a digital camera sensor problem, pictures showing black screen, or just your camera falling into water leaving you in a fix!

Here we have listed 12 common camera problems and their solutions. You can apply the troubleshooting methods in various types of digital cameras, DSLRs, SLRs, etc. The solutions cover all popular brands of Nikon, Fuji, Sony, Canon, Panasonic, Kodak, Olympus and other.

Once everything is in place, press the power button to turn on the camera. If still, your camera doesn"t turn on, the battery could be faulty and need replacement.

Download Stellar Photo Recovery software to retrieve lost or deleted photos and videos from SD card. The software supports all types of memory cards used in Nikon, Canon, Sony, Fuji, etc.

The error message, "Error. Press shutter release button again" on digital camera LCD is often a hardware issue. The gear motor of the Shutter either gets tight, damaged or contaminated with dust. Lubricating the gear motor can help. If your digital camera is under warrantee, turn to the dealer for replacement or repair. Don"t open it yourself.

Use back-button focus technique in which the shutter release takes the shot while a button (AF-ON or AE AF lock) on the back locks the focus. Hold the back button continuously while taking a shot. And as soon as you take off your finger from the back button, the focus gets locked.

The lens error messages can freeze your camera. Even turning it off and on won"t help. Usually, a lens error occur when the lens has dirt or it is not fitted properly on the camera.

Battery errors such as "cannot communicate with battery" or incompatible battery error" on Canon, Sony or Nikon DSLRs are reported by many users. It usually appears when your batteries are not connected properly; there is dust in the battery terminals/ compartment; or the battery is damaged.

For the last two years I’ve primarily used Canon’s astro-friendly and red-sensitive EOS Ra mirrorless, a model sadly discontinued in September 2021 after just two years on the market. I reviewed that camera in the April 2020 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine, with a quick first look here on my blog.

The superb performance of the Ra has prompted me to stay with the Canon mirrorless R system for future camera purchases. Here I test the mid-priced R6, introduced in August 2020.

NOTE: In early November 2022 Canon announced the EOS R6 MkII, which one assumes will eventually replace the original R6 once stock of that camera runs out. The MkII has a 24 Mp sensor for slightly better resolution, and offers longer battery life. But the main improvements over the R6 is to autofocus accuracy, a function of little use to astrophotographers. Only real-world testing will tell if the R6 MkII has better or worse noise levels than the R6, or has eliminated the R6’s amp glow, reported on below.

The Canon R6 has proven excellent for astrophotography, exhibiting better dynamic range and shadow recovery than most Canon DSLRs, due to the ISO invariant design of the R6 sensor. It is on par with the low-light performance of Nikon and Sony mirrorless cameras.

The preview image is sensitive enough to allow easy framing and focusing at night. The movie mode produces usable quality up to ISO 51,200, making 4K movies of auroras possible. Canon DSLRs cannot do this.

Canon’s first full-frame mirrorless camera, the 30-megapixel EOS R, was introduced in late 2018 to compete with Sony. As of late-2021 the main choices in a Canon DSLM for astrophotography are either the original R, the 20-megapixel R6, the 26-megapixel Rp, or the 45-megapixel R5.

The new 24-megapixel Canon R3, while it has impressive low-noise performance, is designed primarily for high-speed sports and news photography. It is difficult to justify its $6,000 cost for astro work.

I have not tested Canon’s entry-level, but full-frame Rp. While the Rp’s image quality is likely quite good, its small battery and short lifetime on a single charge will be limiting factors for astrophotography.

Meanwhile, the original EOS R, while having excellent image quality and features, is surely destined for replacement in the near future – with a Canon EOS R Mark II? The R’s successor might be a great astrophoto camera, but with the Ra gone, I feel the R6 is currently the prime choice from Canon, especially for nightscapes.

But the R6 has a trick up its sleeve for framing nightscapes. Switch the Mode dial to Movie, and set the ISO up to 204,800 (or at night just dial in Auto ISO), and with the lens wide open and shutter on 1/8 second (as above), the preview image will brighten enough to show the Milky Way and dark foreground, albeit in a noisy image. But it’s just for aiming and framing.

The R6 will also autofocus down to a claimed EV -6.5, allowing it to focus in dim light for nightscapes, a feat impossible in most cameras. In practice with the Canon RF 15-35mm lens at f/2.8, I found the R6 can’t autofocus on the actual dark landscape, but it can autofocus on bright stars and planets (provided, of course, the camera is fitted with an autofocus lens).

In manual focus, an additional Focus Aid overlay provides arrows that close up and turn green when in focus on a bright star or planet. Or you can zoom in by 5x or 10x to focus by eye the old way by examining the star image. I wish the R6 had a 15x or 20x magnification; 5x and 10x have long been the Canon standards. Only the Ra offered 30x for ultra-precise focusing on stars.

In all, the ease of framing and focusing will be the major improvement you’ll enjoy by moving to any mirrorless, especially if your old camera is a cropped-frame Canon Rebel or T3i! But the R6 particularly excels at ease of focusing and framing.

Each generation of camera also improves the signal-to-noise ratio by suppressing noise via its sensor design and improved signal processing hardware and firmware. The R6 uses Canon’s latest DIGIC X processor shared by the company’s other mirrorless cameras.

In noise tests comparing the R6 against the Ra and Canon 6D Mark II, all three cameras showed a similar level of noise at ISO settings from 400 up to 12,800. But the 6D Mark II performed well only when properly exposed. Both the R6 and Ra performed much better for shadow recovery in underexposed scenes.

Or it could be that the R6 isn’t as low noise as it should be for a 20 megapixel camera. But it is as good as it gets for Canon cameras, and that’s very good indeed.

The flaw in many Canon DSLRs, one documented in my 2017 review of the 6D Mark II, was their poor dynamic range due to the lack of an ISO invariant sensor design.

The R6, as with Canon’s other R-series cameras, has largely addressed this weakness. The sensor in the R6 appears to be nicely ISO invariant and performs as well as the Sony and Nikon cameras I have used and tested, models praised for their ISO invariant behaviour.

To test the R6, I shot sets of images at the same shutter speed, one well-exposed at a high ISO, then several at successively lower ISOs to underexpose by 1 to 5 stops. I then brightened the underexposed images by increasing the Exposure in Camera Raw by the same 1 to 5 stops. In an ideal ISO invariant sensor, all the images should look the same.

However, to be clear, ISO invariant behaviour doesn’t help you as much if you underexpose by using too short a shutter speed or too small a lens aperture. I tested the R6 in series of images underexposed by keeping ISO the same but decreasing the shutter speed then the aperture in one-stop increments.

Thermal noise is more insidious and harder to eliminate in post without harming the image. However, Monika Deviat offers a clever method here at her website.

As with the EOS Ra, and all mirrorless cameras, the R6 has no “dark frame buffer” that allows several exposures to be taken in quick succession even with LENR on. Canon’s full-frame DSLRs have this little-known buffer that allows 3, 4, or 5 “light frames” to be taken in a row before the LENR dark frame kicks in a locks up the camera on Busy.

With all Canon R cameras, and most other DSLRs, turning on LENR forces the camera to take a dark frame after every light frame, doubling the time it takes to finish every exposure. That’s a price many photographers aren’t willing to pay, but on warm nights it can be necessary, and a best practice, for the reward of cleaner images.

Canons have always been known for their good star colours, and the R6 is no exception. According to DPReview the R6 has a low-pass anti-alias filter in front of its sensor. Cameras which lack such a sensor filter do produce sharper images, but stars that occupy only one or two pixels might not de-Bayer properly into the correct colours. That’s not an issue with the R6.

I also saw no “star-eating,” a flaw Nikons and Sonys have been accused of over the years, due to aggressive in-camera noise reduction even on raw files. Canons have always escaped charges of star-eating.

I saw this type of amp glow with the Sony a7III, a flaw eventually eliminated in a firmware update that, I presume, turned off unneeded electronics in long exposures.

Amp glow is something I have not seen in Canon cameras for many years. In a premium camera like the R6 it should not be there. Period. Canon needs to fix this with a firmware update.

The R6 I bought was a stock “off-the-shelf” model. It is Canon’s now-discontinued EOS Ra model that is (or was) “filter-modified” to record a greater level of the deep red wavelength from red nebulas in the Milky Way. Compared to the Ra, the R6 did well, but could not record the depth of nebulosity the Ra can, to be expected for a stock camera.

TIP:Buying a used Canon Ra (if you can find one) might be one choice for a filter-modified mirrorless camera, one much cheaper than a full frame cooled CMOS camera such as a ZWO ASI2400MC. Or Spencer’s Camera sells modified versions of all the R series cameras with a choice of sensor filters. But I have not used any of their modded cameras.

A concern of prospective buyers is whether the R6’s relatively low 20-megapixel sensor will be sharp enough for their purposes. R6 images are 5472 by 3648 pixels, much less than the 8000+ pixel-wide images from high-resolution cameras like the Canon R5, Nikon Z7II or Sony a1.

TIP:Adobe now offers (in Lightroom and in Camera Raw) a Super Resolution option, that users might think (judging by the rave reviews on-line) would be the answer to adding resolution to astro images from “low-res” cameras like the R6.

Canon now offers the option of shooting either RAW or cRAW files, the latter being the same megapixel count but compressed in file size by almost a factor of two. This allows shooting twice as many images before card space runs out, perhaps useful for shooting lots of time-lapses on extended trips away from a computer.

The R6 uses a new version of Canon’s standard LP-E6 battery, the LP-E6NH, that supports charging through the USB-C port and has a higher 2130mAh capacity than the 1800mAh LP-E6 batteries. However, the R6 is compatible with older batteries.

On warm nights, I found the R6 ran fine on one battery for the 3 to 4 hours needed to shoot a time-lapse sequence, with power to spare. However, as noted below, the lack of a top LCD screen means there’s no ongoing display of battery level, a deficiency for time-lapse and deep-sky work.

TIP:Putting the camera into Airplane mode (to turn off WiFi and Bluetooth), turning off the viewfinder, and either switching off or closing the rear screen all helps conserve power. The R6 does not have GPS built in. Tagging images with location data requires connecting to your phone.

The R6 can shoot at a dragged shutter speed as slow as 1/8-second – good, though not as slow as the Sony’s 1/4-second slowest shutter speed in movie mode. That 1/8-second shutter speed and a fast f/1.4 to f/2 lens are the keys to shooting movies of the night sky. Only when auroras get shadow-casting bright can we shoot at the normal 1/30-second shutter speed and at lower ISOs.

As with Nikons (but not Sonys), the Canon R6 saves its movie settings separately from its still settings. When switching to Movie mode you don’t have to re-adjust the ISO, for example, to set it higher than it might have been for stills, very handy for taking both stills and movies of an active aurora, where quick switching is often required.

However, the R6 offers the option of a “Movie Crop” mode. Rather than taking the 4K movie downsampled from the entire sensor, this crop mode records from a central 1:1 sampled area of the sensor. That mode can be useful for high-magnification lunar and planetary imaging, for ensuring no loss of resolution. It worked well, producing videos with less pixelated fine details in test movies of the Moon.

Shooting in the R6’s Canon cLog3 profile records internally in 10-bit, preserving more dynamic range in movies, up to 12 stops. During eclipses, that will be a benefit for recording totality, with the vast range of brightness in the Sun’s corona. It should also aid in shooting auroras which can vary over a huge range in brightness.

TIP:Processing cLog movies, which look flat out of camera, requires applying a cLog3 Look Up Table, or LUT, to the movie clips in editing, a step called “colour grading.” This is available from Canon, from third-party vendors or, as it was with my copy of Final Cut Pro, might be already installed in your video editing software. When shooting, turn on View Assist so the preview looks close to what the final graded movie will look like.

In one test, I shot a time-lapse from twilight to darkness with the R6 in Aperture Priority auto-exposure mode, of a fading display of noctilucent clouds. I just let the camera lengthen the shutter speed on its own. It tracked the darkening sky very well, right down to the camera’s maximum exposure time of 30 seconds, using a fish-eye lens at f/2.8. This demonstrated that the light meter in the R6 was sensitive enough to work well in dim light.

The R6 has no such option but doesn’t seem to need it. The exposure did fail at the very end, when the shutter reached its maximum of 30 seconds. If I had the camera on Auto ISO, it might have started to ramp up the ISO to compensate, a test I have yet to try. Even so, this is impressive time-lapse performance in auto-exposure.

The R6, like the low-end Rp, lacks a top LCD screen for display of camera settings and battery level. In its place we get a traditional Mode dial, which some daytime photographers will prefer. But for astrophotography, a backlit top LCD screen provides useful information during long exposures.

However, the port is Canon’s low-grade 2.5mm jack. It works, and is a standard connector, but is not as sturdy as the three-pronged N3-style jack used on Canon’s 5D and 6D DSLRs, and on the R3 and R5. Considering the cost of the R6, I would have expected a better, more durable port. The On/Off switch also seems a bit flimsy and easily breakable under hard use.

These deficiencies provide the impression of Canon unnecessarily “cheaping out” on the R6. You can forgive them with the Rp, but not with a semi-professional camera like the R6.

Unlike the Canon R and Ra (which still mysteriously lack a built-in interval timer, despite firmware updates), the R6 has one in its firmware. Hurray! This can be used to set up a time-lapse sequence, but on exposures only up to the maximum of 30 seconds allowed by the camera’s shutter speed settings, true of most in-camera intervalometers.

Like all Canon cameras, the R6 can be set to take only up to 99 frames, not 999. That seems a dumb deficiency. Almost all time-lapse sequences require at least 200 to 300 frames. What could it possibly take in the firmware to add an extra digit to the menu box? It’s there at in the Time-lapse Movie function that assembles a movie in camera, but not here where the camera shoots and saves individual frames. It’s another example where you just can’t fathom Canon’s software decisions.

TIP:If you want to shoot 100 or more frames, set the Number of Frames to 00, so it will shoot until you tell the camera to stop. But awkwardly, Canon says the way to stop an interval shoot is to turn off the camera! That’s crude, as doing so can force you to refocus if you are using a Canon RF lens. Switching the Mode dial to Bulb will stop an interval shoot, an undocumented feature.

As with most recent Canon DSLRs and DSLMs, the menu also includes a Bulb Timer. This allows setting an exposure of any length (many minutes or hours) when the camera is in Bulb mode. This is handy for single long shots at night.

However, it cannot be used in conjunction with the Interval Timer to program a series of multi-minute exposures, a pity. Instead, a separate outboard intervalometer has to be used for taking an automatic set of any exposures longer than 30 seconds, true of all Canons.

In Bulb and Bulb Timer mode, the R6’s rear screen lights up with a bright Timer readout. While the information is useful, the display is too bright at night and cannot be dimmed, nor turned red for night use, exactly when you are likely to use Bulb. The power-saving Eco mode has no effect on this display, precisely when you would want it to dim or turn off displays to prolong battery life, another odd deficiency in Canon’s firmware.

The Timer display can only be turned off by closing the flip-out screen, but now the viewfinder activates with the same display. Either way, a display is on draining power during long exposures. And the Timer readout lacks any indication of battery level, a vital piece of information during long shoots. The Canon R, R3 and R5, with their top LCD screens, do not have this annoying “feature.”

The R6 offers a menu option present on many recent Canon cameras: Multiple Exposure. The camera can take and internally stack up to 9 images, stacking them by using either Average (best for reducing noise) or Bright mode (best for star trails). An Additive mode also works for star trails, but stacking 9 images requires reducing the exposure of each image by 3 stops, say from ISO 1600 to ISO 200, as I did in the example below.

The result of the internal stacking is a raw file, with the option of also saving the component raws. While the options work very well, in all the cameras I’ve owned that offer such functions, I’ve never used them. I prefer to do any stacking needed later at the computer.

Being a mirrorless camera, there is no reflex mirror to introduce vibration, and so no need for a mirror lockup function. The shutter can operate purely mechanically, with physical metal curtains opening and closing to start and end the exposure.

However, the default “out of the box” setting is Electronic First Curtain, where the actual exposure, even when on Bulb, is initiated electronically, but ended by the mechanical shutter. That’s good for reducing vibration, perhaps when shooting the Moon or planets through a telescope at high magnification.

In Mechanical, the physical curtains both start and end the exposure. It’s the mode I usually prefer, as I like to hear the reassuring click of the shutter opening. I’ve never found shutter vibration a problem when shooting deep sky images on a telescope mount of any quality.

In Mechanical mode the shutter can fire at up to 12 frames a second, or up to 20 frames a second in Electronic mode where both the start and end of the exposure happen without the mechanical shutter. That makes for very quiet operation, good for weddings and golf tournaments!

Being vibration free, Electronic shutter might be great during total solar eclipses for rapid-fire bursts at second and third contacts when shooting through telescopes. Maximum exposure time is 1/2 second in this mode, more than long enough for capturing fleeting diamond rings.

Longer exposures needed for the corona will require Mechanical or Electronic First Curtain shutter. Combinations of shutter modes, drive rates (single or continuous), and exposure bracketing can all be programmed into the three Custom Function settings (C1, C2 and C3) on the Mode dial, for quick switching at an eclipse. It might not be until April 8, 2024 until I have a chance to test these features. And by then the R6 Mark II will be out!

TIP:While the R6’s manual doesn’t state it, some reviews mention (including at DPReview) that when the shutter is in fully Electronic mode the R6’s image quality drops from 14-bit to 12-bit, true of most other mirrorless cameras. This reduces dynamic range. I would suggest not using Electronic shutter for most astrophotography, even for exposures under 1/2 second. For longer exposures, it’s a moot point as it cannot be used.

TIP:The R6 has the same odd menu item that befuddles many a new R-series owner, found on Camera Settings: Page 4. “Release Shutter w/o Lens” defaults to OFF, which means the camera will not work if it is attached to a manual lens or telescope it cannot connect to electronically. Turn it ON and all will be solved. This is a troublesome menu option that Canon should eliminate or default to ON.

The little Multi-Function (M-Fn) button is a worth getting used to, as it allows quick access to a choice of five important functions such as ISO, drive mode and exposure compensation. However, the ISO, aperture and shutter speed are all changeable by the three scroll wheels.

Unlike Sonys, the R6 has no dedicated Custom buttons per se. However, it does offer a good degree of customization of its buttons, by allowing users to re-assign them to other functions they might find more useful than the defaults. For example ….

The new wider RF mount accepts only Canon and third-party RF lenses. However, all Canon and third-party EF mount lenses (those made for DSLRs) will fit on RF-mount bodies with the aid of the $100 Canon EF-to-RF lens adapter.

This adapter will be necessary to attach any Canon R camera to a telescope equipped with a standard Canon T-ring. That’s especially true for telescopes with field flatterers where maintaining the standard 55mm distance between the flattener and sensor is critical for optimum optical performance.

The extra spacing provided by a mirrorless camera has the benefit of allowing a filter drawer to be inserted into the light path. Canon offers a $300 lens adapter with slide-in filters, though the choice of filters useful for astronomy that fit Canon’s adapter is limited. AstroHutech offers a few IDAS nebula filters.

Clip-in filters made for the EOS R, such as those offered by Astronomik, will also fit the R6. Though, again, most narrowband filters will not work well with an unmodified camera.

TIP:Alternatively, AstroHutech also offers its own lens adapter/filter drawer that goes from a Canon EF mount to the RF mount, and accepts standard 52mm or 48mm filters. It is a great way to add interchangeable filters to any telescope when using an R-series camera, while maintaining the correct back-focus spacing. I use an AstroHutech drawer with my Ra, where the modified camera works very well with narrowband filters. Using such filters with a stock R6 won’t be as worthwhile, as I showed above.

As of this writing, the selection of third-party lenses for the Canon RF mount is limited, as neither Canon or Nikon have “opened up” their system to other lens makers, unlike Sony with their E-mount system. For example, we have yet to see much-anticipated RF-mount lenses from Sigma, Tamron and Tokina.

Samyang offers 14mm and 85mm auto-focus RF lenses, but now only under their Rokinon branding. I tested the Samyang RF 85mm f/1.4 here at AstroGearToday.

The few third-party lenses that are available, from TTArtisan, Venus Optics and other boutique Chinese lens companies, are usually manual focus lenses with reverse-engineered RF mounts offering no electrical contact with the camera. Some of these wide-angle lenses are quite good and affordable. (I tested the TTArtisan 11mm fish-eye here.)

Until other lens makers are “allowed in,” if you want lenses with auto-focus and camera metadata connections, you almost have to buy Canon. Their RF lenses are superb, surpassing the quality of their older EF-mount equivalents. But they are costly. I sold off a lot of my older lenses and cameras to help pay for the new Canon glass!

I also have reviews of the superb Canon RF 15-35mm f/2.8, as well as the unique Canon RF 28-70mm f/2 and popular Canon RF 70-200mm f/2.8 lenses (a trio making up the “holy trinity” of zooms) at AstroGearToday.com.

Another popular option is the ASIair WiFi controller from ZWO. It controls cameras via one of the ASIair’s USB ports, and not (confusingly) through the Air’s remote shutter jack marked DSLR. Under version 1.7 of its mobile app, the ASIair now controls Canon R cameras and connected to the R6 just fine, allowing images to be saved both to the camera and to the Air’s own MicroSD card.

TIP:While the R6, like many Canon cameras, can be controlled remotely with a smartphone via the CanonConnect mobile app, the connection process is complex and the connection can be unreliable. The Canon app offers no redeeming features for astrophotography, and maintaining the connection via WiFi or Bluetooth consumes battery power.

Allow programming multiple long exposures by combining Interval and Bulb Timer, or by expanding the shutter speed range to longer than 30 seconds, as some Nikons can do.

The extended red sensitivity of the Canon EOS Ra makes it better suited for deep-sky imaging. But with it now out of production (Canon traditionally never kept its astronomical “a” cameras in production for more than two years), I think the R6 is now Canon’s best camera (mirrorless or DSLR) for all types of astrophotography, both stills and movies.

For low-light movies the R6 is Canon’s answer to the Sony alphas. No other Canon camera can do night sky movies as well as the R6. For me, it was the prime feature that made the R6 the camera of choice to complement the Ra.

I took to a camera fixer here in Rio de Janeiro, he dismantled the LCD off and the part indicated on the drawing I sent earlier, then he sprayed corrosionX on this small sensor and it is now fixed.

I actually bought the spare part on eBay (as @Avenger 2.0 kindly indicated), but the technician said it wasn’t needed. Apparently after a few years this small sensor gets a bit of corrosion and starts acting funny. The camera works 100% but the flip screen doesn’t know it was flipped so it turns off when you press it against the camera body.

A funny thing happened to me recently while I was overseas on a photo-shoot. I lost the electronic level display on the LCD of my Canon EOS 5DS R camera when shooting in Live View.

Everything I checked seemed to be in order but for some reason, the electronic display was not showing up on Live View. It still worked on the LCD monitor without Live View though and in the viewfinder.

You may experience problems with your Canon camera from time to time that don"t result in any error messages or other easy-to-follow clues as to the problem. Troubleshooting such problems can be a little tricky. Use these tips to give yourself a better chance of success with your Canon camera troubleshooting techniques.

A few issues can cause this problem in a Canon camera. First, make sure you charge the battery and insert it properly. Even if the battery was inserted in a charger, it"s possible the battery wasn"t inserted properly. Or, possibly, the charger was not plugged into an outlet properly, meaning the battery did not charge.

With this problem, you may have inadvertently opened the battery compartment cover while operating the camera. In this case, close the battery compartment cover securely. Then turn the camera on and off, and the lens should retract.

Some Canon PowerShot cameras have a DISP button, which may turn the LCD on and off. Press the DISP button to turn on the LCD. This is common when the Canon PowerShot camera has an electronic viewfinder option for framing photos, along with the LCD screen for framing photos. The live screen may be active with the electronic viewfinder, so pressing the DISP button can switch the live screen back to the LCD screen.

If you hold the camera near a fluorescent light, the LCD screen image may flicker. Move the camera away from the fluorescent light. The LCD also may appear to flicker when viewing a scene while shooting in minimal light. But if the LCD screen seems to flicker in all types of shooting situations, you may need a repair.

White dots are most likely caused by the light from the flash reflecting off dust or other particles in the air. Turn off the flash or wait until the air clears to shoot the photo.

Some Canon point and shoot cameras don"t exactly match the LCD image and the actual photo image. LCDs might only display 95 percent of the image shot, for example. This difference is exaggerated when the subject is close to the lens. Look through the specification list for your Canon PowerShot camera to see if they list a percentage of scene coverage.

Figuring out how to show photos on a TV screen can be tricky. Press the Menubutton on the camera, select the Settingstab, and match the video system settings in the camera with the video system the TV uses. Some PowerShot cameras cannot display photos on a TV screen because the camera doesn"t have an HDMI output capability or an HDMI output port.

Now, just for some context, I"ve never even held a "fancy camera" (what I"m calling anything above the little handheld digital cameras) It was a little hard for me to figure out the setting and how to use it, but I watched some YouTube videos and got a slight grasp of everything. For some reason the camera will tend to not focus and actually take the picture. It ends up with me awkwardly yelling at my family to hold their pose until the camera will finally decide to click, but I"m going to blame the focusing issue on me lacking knowledge on how to actually use a camera. Another issue I have with the camera is the photo transfer feature (the thing that hooked me into getting this camera was the fact that it could easily transfer photos from your camera to your phone): it"s a little annoying to have to go into the settings to even begin a transfer and make sure both the camera and your phone are connected under the same wifi and once you"re there the camera is left on a blank screen which makes me scared I"m gonna mess something up. Last minor complaint, I promise. The picture I added with that black kitten, it was actually really hard for the camera to decide to take that picture for some reason, like the lighting wasn"t good enough so I had to put my camera light over her just for camera to see there was a subject to aim at and for the flash to go off. Now overall I"m happy with the camera. I love the photos I took with it and I think I just need some more practice with it. It makes me feel like I"m a little professional photographer even though I have no plans of making them look like legit photos one would take.