Canon RP Silent Shooting

It’s been almost two years since I started shooting with Canon EOS RP. I can’t get enough of this camera and am very happy with my choice. It has a full-frame sensor, it’s lightweight, compact, and it supports a new line of cutting-edge RF lenses. With two extra batteries, I don’t care about infamously high power consumption. Slow autofocusing is not a big deal since I’m not into shooting sport events or wildlife. RP costs less than $1000 and weighs less than 500 grams, which is good for my budget and lifestyle.

However, what RP is seriously lacking of is full Electronic Shutter mode. And, consequently, silent shooting. It actually has a designated Silent Mode scene setting, but it doesn’t allow any manual settings of aperture, shutter speed, or ISO. And it shoots in JPEG, which sucks. But there’s a trick that I discovered while playing with Focus Bracketing.1

Enabling electronic shutter

Go to Menu -> CAMERA 5 and enable Focus bracketing. Set the required minimum of Number of shots to 2. Focus increment parameter it better to be set in accordance to the type of your lens, i.e. 10 for 16mm lens, or 1 for 300mm. Leave Exposure smoothing disabled to avoid additional image processing.

When Focus Bracketing is enabled, the mechanical back-curtain shutter will be disengaged in favor of full electronic operation. The camera will stay silent in all modes, including Manual. Every shot will produce two (or more, depending on ‘Number of shots’ setting) consequential images. It’s a small price to pay, which can be helpful with dynamic scenes – as a form of burst shooting.

Why cripple the device?

Both mechanical and electronic shutter systems have their pros and cons. There’s also an Electronic Front-Curtain Shutter, a smart compromise. EFCS is hybrid system which uses a mechanical back-curtain shutter (so MBCS would be a more accurate term). In simple words, a mechanical shutter is a blade that pops out in front of the imaging sensor at the end of exposure. EFCS prevents rolling shutter, artificial light flickering or banding effects, and allows proper flash syncing. But full ES allows faster shutter speeds, prevents sun-star flares, gives better bokeh, and – most of all - allows to shoot silently.

I comprehend that Canon was considering users who ‘may not necessarily be aware of some of the unwanted side effects of using an electronic shutter’. However, I doubt that deliberate crippling of the device is the most effective solution.

  1. There’s a relevant thread on dpreview.com which I discovered later ↩︎

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