<span style="font-size: small;"]I went out shooting on Sunday morning and as planned I arrived at my destination 1 hour before sunrise (pitch black). As I looked for a suitable spot to park I noticed a large owl (outline) sitting on a fence post not more than 30 feet away. The owl (Great Horned) I think, gave me the time to open my case, pull my camera and lens out, mount the flash, turn everything on and check settings, get out of my truck and take aim. Dangit, too dark forAF to work and too dark for me to manually focus--the bird flys away, shot missed. At that moment I realized that I didn't know my camera as good as I thought I did because I didn't know how to fire the FE Lock pre-flashnor did I know to focus in the dark. So today, I started reading both the 7D and the flash manual, again.


<span style="font-size: small;"]It took me a while but I did find in the manual where FE lock was the M-fn button---but mine wouldn't work, ultimately, I discovered that the M-fn button was assigned as the AE-lock (I didn't do this). So the FEL issue was an easy fix, I assigned the M-fn to FEL and now it works like a champ.


<span style="font-size: small;"]Here is the discovery: While pushing all of the buttons on the camera, I discovered that theDepth-of-Fieldpreview button would cause the flash to emit a high frequency flash sequence---I assume that this is the red eye reduction, but I couldn't find any reference in the manuals regarding this. So just for fun, I took the camera in a dark room where I couldn't achieve AF by normal means and tried starting this flash sequence while attempting to Auto Focus (AF-ON button)----It worked. I would push the DOF button and quickly press the AF button while the flash was firing, and the camera would achieve focus. I wish I knew this on Sunday[*-)]. I can find nothing in the manuals that would explain this behavior/technique.


<span style="font-size: small;"]Now, one might ask why the AF focus beam (infra-red beam) on the flash didn't work? My guess is that my owl was to far away for the IR beam to work. To confirm effectiveness of my new found (to me) technique for achieving focus on distant subjects in the dark, I plan to try this out in my back yard tonight and see if I can get a distant object in focus.


<span style="font-size: small;"]Anyway, I thought I would share this. I would love to here your comments---Did I miss something obvious in the manuals?, Is this common knowledge that I just missed???---I promise, I really did look!!!.


<span style="font-size: small;"]Bob


<span style="font-size: x-small;"]