Canon 7D AF Assist beam not working

[triptych]

Hi everyone,

I need a bit of help/advice.

I have a Canon 7D and last night I did a night shoot, and realised the AF assist beam was not working on both my camera and 580EXII flash.

I had a look at both the flash custom funtion settings and the camera custom function settings and they are both on.

Any idea if there is another way to turn it on or is there something wrong with the camera.

Needless to say I had a horrid time focusing last night and had to use a torch to get shots in focus.

Thanks

[agb]

Have you got the settings in C-fnIII-11 set correctly?

[triptych]

Have you got the settings in C-fnIII-11 set correctly?

That is set to 0

[agb]

I think enable is only for the on camera flash. If you had the external flash on the camera then you would have needed to have it set to 2, or depending on the flash 3.

[triptych]

Thanks, will change it...I never use on camera flash

[pmack]

I think this is because your cameras auto focus is set to servo.
change it to one shot

[triptych]

You are right, it was set to servo...thanks!

[in2fx]

Why were you using Auto Focus at night ? I always find it so much better to use Manual Focus at night or in low light and use Live View a lot to get the focus right

[triptych]

Why were you using Auto Focus at night ? I always find it so much better to use Manual Focus at night or in low light and use Live View a lot to get the focus right

I was shooting portraits with a beauty dish as my main light source, I was doing it hand held, so couldnt use live view and it was too dark for me to even see to use manual focus, so I had to rely on a torch...if the shoot had required a tripod I would of course have used live view and manual focus

[pmack]

You are right, it was set to servo...thanks!

i think everyone comes across this issue at some stage.
it's not immediatley obvious what the problem is.
can't remember how i worked it out myself, i think i tested it in auto and it worked, so i figured it must how i set the camera.
i'm not sure of the exact reason why they don't make it fire in servo.
i usually leave my camera in servo, and use back button auto focus which gives the the effective ability of one-shot focus all the time, just without the flash assist beam.

[triptych]

Yeah thats the same reason why I have it in servo, I was moving around too much for the focus lock to be of any use though. The thought crossed my mind that it could have been related to back button focus, but didnt have time (or light) to further investigate at the time lol