R50: Advanced A+ observation

I got an R50 a couple of weeks back, and have been wanting to make time to try out the Advanced A+ feature in depth. That hasn't happened, but I did take a few random shots with it, often not seeing any difference from what I would have normally gotten, or much benefits.

But here's a shot that really surprised me (in a good way!). Excuse the poor photographic quality of the shots, here we're talking technical. The jpegs are full size, as generated by the R50, but I did compress them a bit to get the sizes down.

I was focusing on this sprinkler with 800mm f/11. First I used Av mode, then I tried Advanced A+. Spot the difference:

Av mode:

Advanced A+:

For one thing, I chose ISO 100, with which I got 1/40 sec exposure time, while the A+ mode chose ISO 2500, with 1/1250 sec.

However, the bigger difference - note the picture itself. When I took the first picture, I was just taking a photo of the sprinkler head. Only when I looked at the second photo did I realize that there was a lizard in the background, and that the A+ mode managed to include the sprinkler head as well as the lizard in focus. Both images are f/11 (don't have a choice with that lens!), but clearly the A+ mode chose to do some focus stacking. In fact, at those settings, the depth of field is less than 2 inches, so I don't think it would be possible to get both in focus.

I had the camera in silent mode, so I didn't hear how many shots the A+ mode took. I don't know if there's any other way to tell.

Finally when I realized there was a lizard back there, I took an Av shot focused on the lizard, which does show that the sprinkler head isn't in focus.

Av shot focused on the lizard:

Another nice surprise is that for this third shot the R50 was able to focus on the lizard's eye, even though it's partially blocked by the leaves.

That is quite nice from Canon, to implement much more modes and capabilities into Auto mode. Well, Now I´m not sure how to feel about that. Camera capturing something it saw, instead of the photographer. Also The relevance of such shot, as one would not want the sprinkler in the shot. But further AI would remove the sprinkler from the image too, sooo. CONFUSED! :-)

Hah, how far will things go!?

Well at least it's quite a deliberate mode to get into, so you're not getting this all the time just by being in "auto" mode.

To enable Advanced A+, not only do you set the mode switch to "A+", but then in the menu, under "A+ Assist" item (which is at least on the first pane), you choose the last setting, which is Advanced A+.

On top of that, that setting clears out every time you turn the camera off and on, or switch to another mode and back. So you have to remember to reselect it.