Yes, it holds that focus until you hit the * button again.


And just as a matter of clarification:  In the original post, he says the Left Tool Icon, but it's actually the far right icon.

Nice, I'll try this. 

When you depress the shutter halfway, this now controls exposure lock.  The two functions just switched.

And to take this a step further: if you want to keep the exposure for multiple shot (for a panorama, for example), just don't release the button all the way.  You can still refocus with the back button.  Of course, you can also lock the exposure by shooting in manual.

That is a good question, GouletPens.

I wish that I could answer it but to be very honest the only time I use a remote is when I am on a tripod and when I am on a tripod I am always setting my focus manually. I am dying to know this answer and I would just find out with my own camera and tell you but I am away from home right now. I hope someone comes along and can tell us as I am super curious right now. My thinking is telling me that focus still works but I am not at all certain.

Yeah, that's what I was afraid of, Snapper. I really only ask because I'd like not to have to change the setting back and forth every time I change from tripod to handheld. I do tripod shooting about 90% of the time, the other time is just taking pictures of my kids. I'm changing my focus all the time on my tripod so the back-button focusing doesn't make sense for me there. It would be cool to do it handheld, but since that's so little of my shooting time, I think I might have a hard time un-training myself from the 'old' way of half-pressing the shutter button

I installed the EOS Utility, but actually ended up uninstalling it. I have a really good workflow with tethering my pics into Aperture (where the bulk of my editing is done), and EOS Utility was hijacking my camera. With it installed, it automatically launched whenever I tethered, and I couldn't find anything in the settings to make it not be the default tethering program. Even if I closed the EOS Utility after it launched itself, the camera wouldn't take a picture unless I opened it back up. Aperture would recognize that the camera was there, but I couldn't take a picture at all without EOS Utility as the tethering software. That just wasn't going to work for me, so I ditched it. I've already learned Lightroom 3, Aperture 3 and Photoshop CS5, I don't need yet another program to have to learn Besides, I have an RF remote shutter release anyway, and I'm very used to changing my settings on the camera, so using the EOS utility felt a bit unnatural to me anyway. I mainly tether just for the convenience of having immediate importing of my images to my computer, and for viewing the picture I just took after I snap it on my big honkin' iMac  If I know I'm going to be shooting handheld a lot at once though, like for a family function, I will definitely give the back button focusing a shot (pun!).

Phew....just updated the EOS, and it's working with Lion.

Goulet - I don't have my camera here, it's in the shop, but I'll check tomorrow.  I'm positive that it's doesn't hijack my computer when I plug in my camera....

Sorry everyone for jacking this thread, Mods please move this if it would be better served in its own post! I know I'm new to the forum and I don't want to get a reputation as being one of 'those guys'.

I actually haven't upgraded my iMac to Lion yet, I'm still on SL. All of my other computers are on Lion, I just haven't changed this one yet because, well, I really haven't needed to. I'll check out image capture, but I have a hard time understanding why that would affect the EOS Utility and Aperture.

The whole experience was really weird for me, when I would plug in the camera to the computer, the EOS Utility would immediately pop up. I would close it, and Aperture would be right there, ready to tether with the camera recognized, but I couldn't capture an image either through Aperture or by clicking the camera's shutter. I couldn't even access the camera settings to change anything, it's like the whole thing was paralyzed. As soon as I would unplug the USB cable, it would come back to life, and when I plugged the USB back in, up comes EOS Utility, and the cycle continued. If I closed EOS and turned the camera off (instead of unplugging the USB), then as soon as I turned it back on, guess what....EOS Utility popped back up. I wasn't able to do any kind of finagling to get the camera to tether into Aperture again until I trashed the EOS Utility and rebooted my computer. Then it was all back to normal. I probably could have hunted around some forums and maybe figured out a way to make EOS Utility work like I wanted, but honestly when I was playing around with it I wasn't really seeing how it would help my particular workflow, so I didn't really feel like putting up much of a fight to keep it. I love Aperture and will continue to use it as I have been.