More than likely, you already know that besides your preset modes on your Canon DSLR (B, M, AV, TV,P,CA, and the big green square) that you also have C1, C2, C3.
If you’re not using the C1-C3 settings, You’re craaaaaazy!!!
As Videographers, Eugene & I use these settings so we can save time, and not miss out on catching moments because we’re messing around with the settings on our cameras. I’m not going to go through and be your camera manual, instead I’m going to tell you how we use the C1, C2, and C3 settings.
A lot of times, you’re shooting in situations where lighting is different, which means your white balance will probably be different. Most of us are always shooting on manual, which can be crazy if you’re going back and forth between all the different types of lighting in a room
When we’re doing bridal prep, we pre-pick spots where we want to have the bride getting her makeup on and where she’s going to get into her dress. We start off in manual and get our camera set-up perfectly (white balance, iso, shutter…etc.) Eugene & I usually shoot with 3 cameras. Its not uncommon for us to start with one camera and end up with a completely different camera at the end of the day.
What I mean when I say that is this:
I Love getting detail shots, so I shoot with the 100mm macro pretty often. Obviously, I wont shoot the entire day with the 100mm lens, but Eugene and I use it quite a bit when we really want to make a moment super intimate. I also like shooting on the 50mm as does Eugene. We also have our hollywood camera with the 16-35mm on it. Gotta have the wide angle shots:) It could get real confusing and time consuming if we had to change settings all the time on the cameras everytime we switched with each other. Yeah we could just switch lenses, but thats just as annoying:)
When we first walk into the room, we set our cameras so C1 is set for where the bride gets her make up done. C2, is set for her dress, C3 is always set for outside. This helps us so much just knowing each Camera is already pretty close to being set.
Below you can see a few stills we pulled from video. I was catching a moment where the bride’s mom and the bridesmaids had an assembly line and were tying each other’s dresses. At the same time, Eugene grabbed the camera I had next to me with the 100mm to hurry over and catch the bride getting her makeup done. I had told Eugene I really wanted to get a shot of the bride’s eyes when she was getting her makeup done. (She had the prettiest eyes ever)
The photog had just walked out the door with the dress to get some shots, so we wanted to capture both moments at the same time so we could then go get some killer shots of the wedding dress. By already knowing that C1 was set for the bride getting her makeup done, Eugene was able to just turn the dial to C1 and catch the moment! We then headed outside and while the photog’s getting settings right on their cam, we were able to go ahead and grab our shots pretty quick because we already had our settings for outside.
Eugene stayed outside and got a few different shots while I went back inside to catch some great moments with the bride and her wedding party. We use radios, which also makes capturing the day even easier. I always radio Eugene when its time for the bride to get into her dress. When Eugene comes back, no matter what or where he was shooting before, he can turn the dial to C2 and be ready to go.
Its such a time saver & people are never waiting for us. We avoid being “that guy.” 
Using the C1, C2, & C3 presets can be used for more than extremes like inside and outside. If you’re shooting a wedding where the bride comes down the aisle and it’s lit way different than how the grooms face is lit, why not have C1 set for the bride and C2 set for the groom?
We sometimes wish that instead of having all of the different settings like TV, P, or automatic, they just had the Manual setting and then had C1-C6.
