Canon 5D Mark IV advice? - Forums

Topic starter

Jan 3, 2022

Quick query, I'm leaving in a couple of hours for my first serious DSO shoot using a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV. (Not yet astromodded, but if I decide to make this my main camera, I probably will.) (Glass is Vixen 800mm refractor.) For those who use this camera, what should I know?
Raw+JPEG, check…
ISO 1600 okay?
Anything I need to do about white balance, since I'll be processing raw?
I assume I keep the "dual pixel" whatchamajig *off*?
Since this thing has a mechanical mirror, what do you do to reduce mirror slap?
Shoot with Live View on or off?
How do you handle focusing? I have a Bahtinov mask, but I haven't figured out yet how to get a live view in zoomed mode and with enough brightness to work with the mask. AFAICT, I'm just going to have to shoot longish exposures for focus setup, which also means tracking has to be good when I'm messing with this.
Any gotchas or specific advice on this camera?

Engaging

Arun H

Frequent contributor

Jan 3, 2022

Raw+JPEG, check…: Just RAW should be fine. You'll process RAW most likely and can always convert to JPG later if needed.

ISO 1600: Should be fine. I've shot at Iso 800 and even 400

WB: If shooting RAW, does not matter

Dual Pixel: Yes, off. It is a useless feature

Mirror Slop: When I was using Backyard EOS, I believe there was a settle time option

Live View and Focusing: This was one of the nice features of this camera. I found that you could just point the camera to a bright star, use the Live View AF to focus on it and then turn the lens to MF. It gave me very accurate focus.

Helpful

Scott Badger

Jan 3, 2022

From my Canon 5D Mk IV use….

As stated above, no need to take jpegs.

I had a significant banding issue at ISO's below 1600.

As above, in RAW WB doesn't matter, you'll set it during processing.

Didn't even know about the dual pixel thing…..

So long as Live View is on, mirror slop isn't an issue. I'm using an astro camera now, but I remember there being a specific sequence to have it on while BYEOS is running…..

With the camera in Bulb mode and LV on, I never had a problem zooming in while using a bahtinov mask. Never tried AF on a star.

Cheers,
Scott