There are a number of well-meaning but evidently incorrect blogs which set out some "tricks" that are supposed to give a measure of manual control to aperture, shutter speed and ISO settings. So far, my experience matches the party-line from Canon: they don't work! Of course, you can lock exposure and you can adjust exposure compensation +/- 2 stops. But you can't control individual parameters, so don't bother trying to use that to force a particular combination of settings. It's really a shame, because it would be great to have some control over depth of field.


That said, there is one exception that I have personally verified, and that is that you can force aperture-priority manual control if you use a non-Canon lens with an adapter. How ironic. Suddenly, those old screw-mount and Nikon primes become useful again! My careful testing shows that the modern Canon primes really are superior to these older lenses wide-open, but stopped down the old primes are very fine.


I am puzzled why Canon didn't include some even rudimentary Av setting. My guess is that they didn't have time--the camera was late to market and the video was a last-minute addition to make it exciting in a competitive environment. It would be great if Canon were to add the feature with a firmware upgrade, but I feel that would be an unlikely break with precedent.