AboutSteve Meltzer Expertise I am a professional photographer and I've been shooting for newspapers, magazines, commercial clients and artists for over 30 years.
I have shot stock photography for dozens of years and in 1977 created West Stock (Seattle, WA) which was one of the first to produce stock photo CDs and later one of the first to establish an online stock photo slaes site.
I have a new book on digital photography "PHOTOGRAPHING ARTS, CRAFTS AND COLLECTIBLES (Lark Books, 2007)which is available at Amazon.com, eBay.com and in bookstores like Barnes & Noble and Borders. I have another book, CAPTURE THE LIGHT which will be puiblished in November, 2008.
I write 20-30 feature articles and columns for regional and national publications a year.
My education includes studying with photographers like Cornell Capa, Duane Michels and Oliver Gagliani (from the Ansel Adams Center.)
Expert: Steve Meltzer Date: 6/7/2007 Subject: ring light
Question I would greatly appreciate it if you could answer this question
1) I have a canon Rebel Ext digital SLR with a Canon E 100mm, 1:2.8usm macro lens. I just purchased a canon mr - 14ex macro ring light that is working great. The only problem is that unless it is in the actual "CLOSEUP" mode (as opposed to the M, AV, TV or other creative modes)the AUTOMATIC FOUCUS will not work and I have to manually focus. I want to be able to go into the "M" or TV or AV modes and use autofocus but it is not working. Could you tell me what I am doing wrong? thank YOU.
Answer I don't think that you are doing anything wrong. The closeup mode is probably needed to transmit information to the flash to control its output. I suspect the factory made the flash this way to optimize its use.
Closeup mode sets a series of parameters for the processing engine and that is probably why you have to use it for autofocusing to kick in. That yuo have a close-up mode at all means that there were issues with the other modes that the engineers could not resolve within those modes.
You are just going to have to work with it I think. I assume you've read all the manuals first.
